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DEMIGODS 


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DEMIGODS © 


By 
JOH*Y' BIGGS, Jr. 


NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


1926 


RING 


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Copyricut, 1926, By 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


Printed in the United States of America 













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FOREWORD 


This is the book of the Charlatans. May 
it be flesh of their flesh, blood of their 
blood. May that pitiable company here 
recognize some portion of their burning 
hopes, some part of their pride. 





CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 


I. Hosta GAULT 

II. JoHN GauLT . 
Ill. Joun Gautt’s JouRNEY 
IV. Joun Gau_t GRowN 


V. Gautt’s Enp . 


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DEMIGODS 





DEMIGODS 


I. HOSEA GAULT 
“Let the dead speak.” 


A SINGLE grave marks the begin- 
ning of this story. It lies in Granary 
Ground outside of Boontown, at the head 
of the Valley of the Israel. 

The Valley of the Israel rolls out from 
the heights of the White Mountains. The 
six great peaks of the Presidential range 
stand athwart its sky. To the right lie the 
ridges of the Plinys, vast twins that shoul- 
der up from a terrain that rolls like the 
sea. To the left, dim and blue with dis- 
tance, stand forth the rapier points of 
Franconia. In the rear, a buttress to the 
great wall of the Presidents, stands 
Cherry Mountain, little more than a foot- 
hill, but gashed across its face by a slide 
—white, staring, in the form of a cross. 


[1] 





Demigods 





Into this, as into a cup, pour the moun- 
tain winds. They begin their courses 
upon the shoulders of Starr King, miles 
distant across the valley. They move 
swiftly downward in alternate patches of 
sky and sweeping cloud, mist-grey or 
bright as the sun. They press upon the 
tops of scrub pine, swirl into heavier for- 
est. They pass to the upland pastures; 
the waving bush tops whip like swords; 
and they thence move to the floor of the 
valley. Their courses may be measured 
by their flying outriders of cloud. They 
touch the land with cold and bracing 
fingers and ride away with a final hurri- 
cane swirl and sigh. 

The Israel River rises upon Mount 
Jefferson almost at the summit. It wan- 
ders from a spring in a small stream that 
seeps through moss to the edge of the ra- 
vine. Here, in a tiny whisper, it drops 
over the edge of a precipice. It parts 
into mist that clings like a veil to the 
outer surface of the rock. Thereafter, it 
boils down the ravine, a castellated bas- 


[2] 


Hoseu Gault 


tion that rims the sky. A path leaps down 
with it. The two plunge together into the 
darkness of the forest, to emerge, miles 
below, in the shadow of Cairn Mountain, 
crossing the road that leads to Boontown. 

To this spot, then but sparsely inhabi- 
ted, came a colony of Dunkards. The 
year of the beginning of their migration 
was 1869. They were led by John Gault’s 
father, Hosea Gault. It is well that you 
should judge fully the cause of the father, 
since this history concerns itself with the 
son. 

Physically, Hosea Gault was unique. 
By trade he was a blacksmith. Red was 
his color, rendered so by the blaze of 
many forge fires. Hair the color of blaz- 
ing thatch crested a burnt red face. Hot 
eyes smouldered beneath fiery brows. 
Girth was encircled by a vast belt of 
leather. He stank with a strange Aetnean 
perfume of soot, sweat, and smoke. 

Throughout his life he was to prove to 
be a thorn in the flesh of the Dunkards. 
They were a sober people, given to a staid 

P34 





Demigods 


devotion to a quiet god. Not so, Hosea 
Gault. His god was a Jehovah of battles 
and of storm, who strode the earth with 
ringing feet, who lashed in fury at the 
unrighteous and the disbelieving, who 
drilled the penitent back into the ranks of 
his militia. He hammered out his people 
upon the anvils of their faith. None might 
stand before his blows. 

In addition to this he was a god of 
dreams and visions which in due time he 
vouchsafed to the believing to make his 
purposes known. Such dreams came to 
Hosea Gault. Strangely, as if the man 
put purpose to the god, they were always 
such as were shaped to Gault’s burning 
vitality, his vast restlessness. 

As a paradox to his great physical 
strength, Hosea Gault possessed surpris- 
ing delicacy of mind. To him occurred a 
mystical and entrancing vision, an angel, 
his head set with seven stars, his feet upon 
,mountains, commanding him North. The 
Dunkard elders refused this flaming mes- 
sage. Hosea Gault led forth some forty 

[4] 


Hosea Gault 


followers with their women and children 
in a lasting schism. 

Throughout the progress of this newer 
Hegira certain characteristics of Hosea 
Gault stand out plainly. No one possessed 
authority but himself. All power was in 
him. To him had come a Revelation 
which swept all previous creeds, com- 
mandments, and dogmas, into dust. 

Certain portions of his vision had been 
very plain. For example, it was specifi- 
cally commanded that oxen should bear 
the faithful to their new abode. No other 
beast of burden would suffice. It was com- 
manded that the pilgrims should number 
precisely forty-four. This was the exact 
number which had volunteered. Through- 
out the length and breadth of the vision 
one sees a curious relationship between 
that which was commanded and that 
which actually came to pass. It was as 
though Gault’s native shrewdness, to a de- 
gree, struggled with and overpowered the 
sincerity of his religious impulse. Though 
the limits of his dream touched the sky, 

esa) 





Demigods 


eee 


he was careful to keep its feet upon the 
earth. He was like a good tactician, who 
is ever careful to hold his armies in an 
impregnable position. It would seem that 
this portion of the Revelation shades into 
insincerity. 

Not so the outer portions of the vision, 
however. They rested in the illimitable 
outposts of mysticism. None might say, 
not even Hosea Gault, where they began 
or where they ended. Gault did not know 
what purpose his god was making mani- 
fest to him. He did not care to inquire. 
But with the passing of time, it seemed 
to him that he was designated to be the 
prophet of a new and pure religion, 
which should arise by his hands out of a 
wilderness. That wilderness he sought. In 
his wanderings, he and his proselytes cov- 
ered a distance of a thousand miles and 
consumed three years. 

His caravan consisted of fifteen cov- 
ered wagons and some thirty oxen. The 
men of his column followed behind him, 
wearily, patiently, blindly. Hosea Gault 

[ 6 ] 





Hosea Gault 


marched in front, out of sight of the col- 
umn. He permitted none to accompany 
him. In this solitude a pillar of dust from 
the moving wagons was set against his 
back by day. At night he returned to the 
Dunkard fires to preach. 

The manner of his preaching is re- 
membered still. ‘The wagons would be 
backed into a wide half circle. The men 
and women, in separate groups, would sit 
before them. Hosea Gault, standing upon 
the open tail board of the center wagon, 
would create a new heaven and a new 
earth with the flail of his gigantic fist. His 
voice, vast, roaring, seemed to roll back 
the darkness that encompassed earth. His 
great shoulders moved in a sort of singu- 
lar rhythm, accentuating the periods of 
his speech. Without doubt, as he was 
without fear, too simple in mind to be 
capable of sacrilege, for him the inex- 
pressible did not exist. No creed, nor por- 
tion of it, no belief nor part of it, escaped 
the destruction of his wrath. He swept 
heaven and earth clean, leaving neither 


[7] 





Demigods 


gods nor men. Into these twin voids, Ho- 
sea Gault struck a new god and new earth, 
abiding places for the faithful of his peo- 
ple. 

“Your land is waiting for you,” he told 
them unfailingly. “I see it before me al- 
ways. In time you also shall see! It is 
cupped, like a curving of hands, among 
the far lost places of the hills. A clear 
stream flows through the center of our 
valley. Great mountains rest like folded 
arms for miles and miles on either side. 
It has been marked by God—” With this 
pause, his people would look wondering- 
ly and vaguely at one another, but always 
they turned back to him to hear his whis- 
per— “TI shall know it. It is marked!” 

When his passion was upon him, Ho- 
sea Gault was inspired. His thunderous 
voice re-echoed from the silence of the 
hills. His great fist struck splinters of 
broken wood from the boards of the wag- 
on. His eyes lighted and flashed. He was 
a man aflame. None might doubt his sin- 
cerity; none, his power. A new god was 


[8 ] 


Hosea Gault 


created, in the image of his creator, and 
Hosea Gault was his prophet. 

But once were his teachings questioned. 
A loosely-built, thinly-clad man had 
stood with shaking hands stretched be- 
yond the edge of the fire. Saltus, by name, 
he had been of the company since the be- 
ginning of the journey. His thin body 
shivered with excitement and with cold. 
His eyes followed the mood of the relent- 
less prophet who towered above him 
upon the wagon tongue. In a sharp, shrill 
cry, he denounced him. 

“Blasphemy!” he cried. “Blasphemy. 
Get down—Get away!—” He, in his pip- 
ing treble, shouted heresy with the whole 
of his power. 

So lost was Hosea Gault in the story of 
his god, that a minute passed before he 
noticed his traducer. Then, in a rage that 
transcends belief, he cleared the fire in a 
single leap and struck the atheist sense- 
less to the ground. Picking up the limp 
body, he had held it high above his head, 
as if, like some priest of Moloch, he was 


[9] 





Demigods 


about to immolate the flesh and bones of 
the blasphemer in the flames. Suddenly, 
however, he cast it back to earth, and, 
turning, strode off into darkness. From a 
wagon, set within the semicircle, ap- 
peared Saltus’ wife. Wailing, she ran to 
the fallen man. With arms too slight for 
the task, alone, she struggled to drag him 
back to the shelter of the wagon. None 
aided her; none other would touch the 
body of Hosea Gault’s betrayer. Upon 
this occasion, Gault was gone from his 
people for a period of three days, while 
his frenzied proselytes searched wood 
and hill and valley for their prophet. 


A similar incident, in which Hosea 
Gault descended literally from the pulpit 
to earthly battle, was to occur at the little 
village of Adams in Vermont. The pil- 
grims had consumed a year and a half in 
the course of their journey. They were 
then in the mid-summer of their second 
year. 

The heat was excessive. The whole of 


[ 10 ] 


Hosea Gault 


the Connecticut valley was burned dry. 
The corn was shrivelled to dust in the 
fields, ‘The apple trees were parched and 
wilting. The river bed, below the dams, 
was white with sand through which thin 
rivulets of water trickled almost without 
sound. 

To the west of the village of Adams 
the river swings in a wide curve. Its bed 
is of great breadth. Across this a covered 
bridge led to the village standing upon 
the point. It was a tiny town, containing 
not more than two hundred inhabitants. 
Its houses were low, rambling structures, 
painted white, with vine-covered porches. 
In its center was a small, white court- 
house, and behind it, a brick jail, crum- 
bling for lack of use, with heavy iron bars 
set in its single window. 

One may picture the pilgrims emerg- 
ing from the mouth of the bridge. Hosea 
Gault marched first, alone. The skin of 
his throat and chest lay open to sun and 
wind. His flaming hair had grown long, 
falling down upon his neck. His feet were 


[11 | 





Demigods 


bare. In his hand was a great hawthorn 
stick, a staff cut from the wayside. He 
emerged like a reddened colossus, blink- 
ing in the sunlight after the latticed shad- 
ow of the bridge. 

After him came his proselytes. The 
oxen were galled and lame. Their lack- 
lustre eyes rolled wearily under the glare 
of the sun. The yokes had plowed their 
necks with sores. The wagons lurched 
heavily through the ruts of the road. 
Their boards were unpainted, worn and 
broken, held together with rope or an oc- 
casional strip of cloth. In them rode the 
women and children, pale, ill-nourished, 
weary, upheld only by their faith in the 
leader who marched so restlessly ahead. 
The men walked beside the wagon, their 
heads down, their long whips trailing 
through the dust. 

To many of these women the sight of 
the white houses of Adams must have 
brought unutterable longing to be freed 
of the weary road that they had set for 

[12] 


Hosea Gault 


themselves, but with patient resignation 
they kept to their chosen course. 

The spot selected by Hosea Gault for 
the night’s camp was just beyond the edge 
of the village. Here, in the pasture of a 
farm, he had thrust his hawthorn staff up- 
right in the earth. Around this the wag- 
ons were grouped. A fire was built just 
beyond the staff. There was a plenitude 
of fresh water, for the land curved gently 
towards the river. A steep, stone-flecked 
hill was at the rear of the camp site. 

Standing upon this hill, looking down 
into the amphitheater below, where sat 
his people and a few of the villagers who 
had come to hear him, Hosea Gault 
preached as he had never preached be- 
fore. Night had fallen. There was no 
moon. His figure was invisible upon the 
hillside. It was as if a disincarnated spir- 
it addressed a multitude in a voice of 
thunderous beauty. 

He spoke for hours. More clearly than 
ever before he seemed to be aware of the 
purpose that had been set upon him. His 

Pesce 





Demigods 


mysticism was more exalted; he spoke 
with greater certainty. He told of the 
fullness of his Revelation, of the life that 
awaited the believer in the city that 
should be raised out of the wilderness, of 
the power, sheer and terrible, of his god. 
His mighty voice rolled out into the dark- 
ness, was thrown back by the hills. With- 
out pause, as if some force that com- 
manded speech were welling up within 
him, he spoke on, exalting his hearers by 
a passion that was greater than eloquence, 
by the sublimity and power of his dream. 

The sky grew darker, losing its faintly 
luminous tinge. A few drops of rain fell. 
Hosea Gault ceased to speak. Then fol- 
lowed silence. | 

From the river bank, where sat the vil- 
lagers, suddenly arose laughter, raucous, 
derisive. Thus was the new prophet ac- 
claimed. 

From the hillside descended Hosea 
Gault. A shadow in a dream could not 
have been swifter than he. With huge 
arms upraised in his habitual gesture, bel- 


[14] 


Hosea Gault 


lowing like a brute, he rushed upon his 
detractors. 

They struggled and struck in the dark- 
ness, a monstrous animal that had turned 
upon itself, blind, mad, weaving a tor- 
tured pattern across the earth. Mouths it 
possessed that bit and sobbed; innumer- 
able limbs that tore its own flesh. Sense- 
less, inchoate, it struggled on. 

Darkness covered all—the thresh of 
blows through the shallow sand of the 
beach, the distorted outlines of straining 
limbs, the rattle of falling shale and rock, 
the strangled blasphemies, the shouts, the 
cries for help. Through this, like a knife, 
cut a single shrill scream. Hosea Gault 
was sacrificing in blood. 

The end came swiftly as he rose in tri- 
umph upon the bank; he was felled from 
behind like a pole-axed bull, lay motion- 
less, his great arms outstretched before 
him. The proselytes that rushed to his res- 
cue were beaten back. Hosea Gault was 
dragged to the jail and cast within it. 

He lay there for a period of three days. 

Longe 





Demigods 


Throughout that time, by a transforma- 
tion that was significant in him, he gave 
no heed to the consequences that awaited 
him under the law, no thought to the man 
he had injured. To him had occurred a 
new vision, startling in its beauty, of 
greater clarity than the clearest crystal. 
It was of a valley that lay ahead, a wil- 
derness of tree and fern, of land rich for 
tilling when it had been cleared. Press- 
ing his huge body against the bars of his 
cage, Hosea Gault described it to his ea- 
ger flock. “It was a cup which the Lord 
had filled for them,’ he said. “It was 
great bowl, rimmed with blue hills, cut 
by living water. They would move on 
into the mountains. The valley would 
open before them, would spread forth 
like a hand. It would be theirs. None 
might take it from them.” Panting in his 
eagerness to be free, distraught lest this 
vision might escape him, Hosea Gault 
beat against the brick and iron, calling 
upon his proselytes to liberate him. 

His imprisonment was destined to 


[16] 





Hosea Gault 


come to an end as suddenly as it had be- 
gun. Upon the morning of the fourth day, 
the farmer whom Gault had injured, re- 
covered from the effects of his head 
wound, petitioned the magistrate for 
Gault’s release, and cast his lot, a convert 
to the Dunkards. Before the coming of 
noon the caravan was under way. 

The road led North. The white river 
followed it. Forward Hosea Gault led 
his proselytes. The taste of his vision 
burned upon his lips; its remembrance 
was light before his eyes. He desired no 
rest nor sleep until the truth of his Reve- 
lation had been brought to pass. Now the 
road commenced to rise and upon the 
horizon, like ships hull-down, appeared 
the first ranges of the mountains. For a 
time they seemed to recede, to creep ever 
back into the fastness that stretched 
ahead; but, with the coming of night, 
they lay near at hand, a mighty wall 
against the darkening sky, and the weary 
oxen lifted their muzzles to the fresh 
mountain wind. 


[17] 





Demigods 


That night there was little rest 
throughout the caravan. Each man felt 
the consummation of the vision to be near 
at hand. The sky rang with hymns, with 
shouting and rejoicing. A woman, dressed 
in grey, tall.as a specter, so thin and ema- 
ciated that her body resembled a trellis of 
bone, her eyes deep sunk in the hollows 
of her head, led the company in a refrain 
that beat like marching feet. Half-chant- 
ing, her head uplifted to the night, she 
sang in a cadence, slow, irresistible, but 
wild with triumph—“My feet are upon 
the Way: My Salvation is at hand! My 
land is come, and I am come to Home!” 
The sound seemed to rise to the stars, the 
voices of the men and women sounding 
clear upon the night. Great fires were 
lighted, which flickered red to the verge 
of the forest that encircled the camp. 
Dawn found the pilgrims upon the 
march. 

The day that followed shall never be 
forgotten in the annals of the Dunkards. 
The river, white and brawling, fell away 


[ 18 ] 


Hosea Gault 


to the left. The road stretched on, a thin 
line that glinted above them through the 
darkness of the forest. It seemed to rise 
upon the shoulders of the mountains, 
which, in a single great buttress, stretched 
as far as the eye could see. And as the 
road grew steeper, its character changed. 
The well-traveled surface fell away. It 
grew narrower, stony, was blocked with 
great trees felled by the winter storms. In 
time it became little more than a track 
through the wilderness. Always it rose, 
until, looking back, the pilgrims might 
perceive the land over which they had 
come, a fertile plain stretching far to the 
South, cut by the white line of river and 
sparsely set with little villages. About 
them lay the ridges of the mountains, 
black with forest through which the wind 
whipped as through a field of grain. The 
ridge upon which their course lay shoul- 
dered upwards towards two greater sum- 
mits, and the head of the pass gleamed 
white with granite, glistening from the 
water of some tiny spring. 


[ 19 ] 


Demigods 


The path steepened. The laboring oxen 
were scarcely able to move the wagons. 
The underbrush cut steeply down from 
the sides of the ravine, creating new bar- 
riers. 

Through these obstacles Hosea Gault 
forced a way. His flaming body was fol- 
lowed by his proselytes as a torch through 
darkness. In a fury of effort he tore a 
path where none had been, beat back the 
wilderness with the flail of his great arms. 
It was as if he offered his body and his 
flesh as a path over which the weaker 
should mount. Night found the pilgrims 
at the head of the pass, and the men, ex- 
hausted, slept where they had fallen be- 
side their wagons. 

At dawn they were awakened by Hosea 
Gault. He stood upon the pedestal of rock 
at the head of the pass. With outstretched 
arms he seemed to embrace the valley 
that rolled out beneath him. 

The rim of the rising sun rested upon 
further mountains, the outer edge of the 
valley. From these as from a cauldron of 


[ 20 ] 


Hosea Gault 


boiling colors rose mists seeping towards 
the zenith of the sky. Little by little the 
valley emerged. The bristle of scrub pine 
succeeded to depth of forest, to green up- 
lands, at last to a great and level expanse, 
still flecked with haze, of distance im- 
measurable to the eye, gleaming with the 
thin line of river, cupped upon its outer 
edge with blue and tranquil hills. 

Throughout this Revelation Hosea 
Gault stood as one who watches the un- 
folding of a dream. His voice died in his 
throat; his strength seemed lost, thrust 
out of him and spent in the valley at his 
feet. His huge body remained motionless, 
except for a slight trembling, and the 
light of the sun, faint at first, rose over 
him, lighting his face, rendering his body 
incarnadine, bestowing upon him at last 
the unshaken glory of the sun. 

His lips were parted; his head, thrown 
back; and upon him was set an expression 
which his proselytes had never seen. His 
face was softened. His look was of gentle- 
ness and humility as one who with star- 


[21] 


Demigods 


tled but believing eyes has watched the 
working of a miracle. 

He spoke at last in so low a voice that 
only the nearest of his proselytes might 
hear him. 

‘This is the valley,” he said. “This, the 
Lord has vouchsafed to me.” 


The first years of the founding of Boon- 
town by Hosea Gault differ but little 
from the founding of any other religious 
establishment. 

The colony was set at the foot of the 
white cross upon Cherry Mountain, be- 
lieved by Gault to be a symbol of his 
faith. From this point to the river the 
land was cleared. ‘The first farms were al- 
most upon the slopes of the mountain; the 
newer and more fertile ground touched 
upon both sides the bed of the stream. 
Down this, in the early spring, from the 
great ranges of the mountains came such 
torrents of white, boiling water as threat- 
ened to engulf the land, but only once, as 


[ 22 ] 


Hosea Gault 


by the exercise of a miracle, were the 
farms of the pilgrims touched. 

The first act of the pilgrims, and this, 
not strangely, seemed to possess an esoter- 
ic significance, almost as though they 
builded an altar for their god, was the 
erection of a forge for Hosea Gault. The 
spot selected by him for this structure 
was at a deep bend of the Israel River. 
The stream turned West, was broad but 
very turbulent, and had cut its channel 
down to the basic rock. Here a bank of 
high white sand rose above the river in a 
slope so steep that it was like a cliff, and 
from this point, as from a look-out, one 
might survey the length of the valley with 
vision unimpeded by tree or knoll. Seen 
from this place the valley was like a cres- 
cent, rising in the slopes of mighty Jeffer- 
son, elongating itself and fading into dis- 
tance, checked at its end by the white dots 
that comprised the little town of Lancas- 
ter, the nearest habitation to the Dunkard 
settlement. 

The forge of Hosea Gault was built 

[ 23 ] 





Demigods 


upon the sand bank. The lumber was 
hewn by hand from the virgin forests 
upon the sides of Cherry Mountain. Yel- 
low pine was the wood, soft, resinous, 
bleeding like wounded flesh when it was 
cut. 

Four huge posts marked the confines of 
the shack. Upon these was set a roof, 
strawed to protect the floor beneath from 
wind and rain. Sides were built to the 
structure, sodded at their base. In the cen- 
ter of the floor, a chimney above it like a 
broad opened fan, was set the forge. Stone 
from the river bed, plastered with mud, 
formed its sides, and upon this rectangu- 
lar altar gleamed fire, red and glowing. 
A great wheel, rubbed smooth by the 
touch of many hands, controlled the bel- 
lows. Gault’s anvil, set upon a cairn of 
stones, was immediately below the forge. 

In this place Hosea Gault struck blows 
to iron that resounded clangorously 
throughout the silence of the forest and 
mountains, and, with as great surety as he 
shaped the iron beneath his sledge, he 

[ 24 | 





Hosea Gault 


formed his people to his design. As he 
beat upon his anvil, he issued orders: the 
land was to be divided in such a way; 
such forests should be felled; such left; 
so many houses were to be built; such 
grain or timber was to be contributed to 
the common store. Twice a day, as might 
any careful general, he inspected his 
small army at its labor. Did their strength 
fail, he set his own shoulder to the weight. 
He measured each man to his task, set for 
him his purpose and his daily stint: so 
many were employed as hewers of the 
forest; so many, in tilling the soil; such a 
number, as builders. To their toil he com- 
manded and held them. Throughout these 
days Hosea Gault stands forth as an in- 
spired administrator. 

Certainly, at this time, the essences of 
his soul were saner, more composed, than 
ever before. The burning leadership that 
had sustained his people upon their long 
hegira remained, but upon it was imposed 
a new tranquility. It was as if the pains of 
his nature had been assuaged by the ful- 

[25] 





Demigods 


fillment of his Revelation. Almost, was 
he at peace. 

Nightly, he preached. His people 
would gather about the fires of his forge 
or take their places upon the shale of the 
river bed below the high, white bank. 
Here, as of old, Hosea Gault told of his 
god, but in a way the god himself had 
changed, taking a new tranquility from 
his disciple. No longer did this deity seem 
swept by demoniac rage, to threaten with 
thunder and passion. He was more quiet, 
more gentle, excellently pleased with the 
labors of his proselytes. He was like some 
colossus who retires sleepily to rest, but 
making sure that he will emerge again in 
fury and dreadful wrath. Hosea Gault 
made known the way of his god and of 
this, his land. 

‘“‘We have set our hands to our labor,” 
he said. “We have found favor in the 
sight of our God. This, I make known to 
you. Let your toil be for your sons that 
shall follow you. Strike for your faith lest 
God in wrath should withdraw his face 

[ 26 ] 





Hosea Gault 


from us! This, our land, has been granted 
to us. Shall we be unmindful of our pur- 
poser Let us clear and hew, plant the 
earth.” 

Gradually, but with surety, the Dun- 
kard colony established itself. The first 
winter passed, and though the climate 
was bitterly cold, the pilgrims, accus- 
tomed to the greater hardships of their 
journey, suffered little. Spring cleared 
the snow from the mountain tops; the 
storms ceased; the Israel ran white 
against its banks, leaping in cataracts 
from the upper slopes. The valley 
changed color, turning from sere yellow, 
where the snow had freshly left the 
ground, to fresher green. The scudding 
clouds over the mountain tops grew white 
and soft. Summer brought the first full 
harvests. 

In the third year of the Dunkard ad- 
vent to Cherry Mountain, the peace of 
mind of Hosea Gault found unique ex- 
pression. In the sight of his warrior god 
he must have felt that his leadership had 

[27] 


Demigods 


been justified, was acceptable and com- 
plete. In his triumph he erected the 
Meeting House that stands at the head of 
Granary Ground. 

To this structure Hosea Gault brought 
a sense of beauty that no Greek of a gold- 
en age could have surpassed. The spirit 
that possessed him had turned anew, seek- 
ing in this visible temple satiety for its 
greatness. 

Granary Ground upon this day in June, 
1922, has changed but little from the 
form which was set upon it by Hosea 
Gault. On the river side stand the re- 
mains of the granary from which the land 
takes its name. From the East one sees the 
white walls of the Meeting House 
through the darkness of the trees. 

The approach is wooded, but so silent 
are the pines that the ripple and rush of 
the Israel are very clear. Looking back, 
one sees that the deserted Dunkard cot- 
tages form a half-circle in the shadow of 
Cherry Mountain. 

To-day a wall of crumbling, unce- 

[ 28 ] 


Hosea Gault 


mented stone surrounds the burial 
ground. Some sixty graves lie within its 
compass. The grave stones are very plain, 
cut in crude letters with the name of the 
decendents and the dates of their deaths. 
Another wall sharply divides the ground. 
It is upon the North side of the Meeting 
House, and beyond it lie the graves of 
those who in some manner offended the 
austerities of the Dunkard faith. One 
looks for the body of him who blas- 
phemed his god one night beside the fire. 
He and his descendants lie therein—the 
bodies of Joseph Saltus and his children 
placed everlastingly beyond the hope of 
blessing. There are many others. 

One comes upon them suddenly and is 
a little shocked by this discrimination in 
death. The feeling passes quickly, how- 
ever, for here is such mellow confluence 
of light and air that the dead even must 
be liberated by it. The long reaches of the 
valley stretch away from their feet, while 
the wind that sweeps over their graves 

[29 ] 





Demigods 


rises in the limitless spaces of the moun- 
tains. 

The Meeting House stands at the head 
of the ground. It is a stark, white build- 
ing, rectangular in shape. So delicately is 
it wrought that its very lines seem to hang 
upon the air. No sign is upon it, yet its as- 
pect is one to be worshipped. The hand of 
Hosea Gault lies deep in Granary 
Ground, but no hand ever raised a more 
perfect dwelling for its god. 

Certain it is that Hosea Gault began 
his preparations for the building with 
prayer. He did not kneel—such an obei- 
sance was impossible to his nature—but 
throughout a day and night, ceaselessly, 
he hammered out the heated iron upon 
his forge: and, as his sledge rose and fell, 
meditation and prayer possessed him. 
Throughout that day and night, his flock 
stayed beyond the sound of the ringing 
iron, fearful of what this energy por- 
tended. 

When morning had come Gault took 
himself to the patch of red oak upon the 

[ 30 | 


Hosea Gault 


side of the mountain. Here he selected 
seven trees, straight-limbed, tall, like 
spears that pointed to heaven. ‘These he 
marked, notching them with a cross upon 
the bark that cut to the red wood beneath. 
Upon the second day, he returned and 
felled them to the earth. From these trees, 
the joists, end-posts, and beams of the 
Meeting House, were formed. There- 
after, from among his proselytes, he se- 
lected a man here and a man there: one, 
who was clever with his hands; another, 
who understood the cutting and carving 
of wood; a third, who before his regener- 
ation by the Dunkards had been a sailor 
and had wielded heavy tackle. In all, this 
picked company numbered about a dozen 
men. Them, Gault commanded to trim 
the fallen oaks, bring oxen, and haul the 
logs to Granary Ground. 

The logs were cut, smoothed, and 
planed. The joists and beams were 
formed. Hosea Gault caused them to be 
set in place. ‘The plan which he followed 
was visible to his mind alone. None other 


[31] 





Demigods 


knew it; but quickly the rectangle took 
shape. The bed plates of iron upon which 
the joists were set, the nails which held 
beam to beam, were hammered out by 
Gault upon his forge. Each bit of iron, 
each piece of wood was consecrated with 
the sweat of his body. It seemed that it 
was necessary for him to touch each item 
with his hands. It was as if a biting hun- 
ger to feel the erection of this temple pos- 
sessed him. Nothing might be put into 
place until it had been within his hands. 
A central joist which had been set when 
he was at his forge was uprooted from its 
place, cast upon the ground while the 
workmen stood trembling beside it. 
Them, he thrust right and left, calling 
them traitors to him and the end he 
served. 

The Meeting House took shape swift- 
ly. The naked bones of its skeleton were 
covered with flesh of oak. Its rough clap- 
boards were smoothed and trimmed. The 
ground before the structure was cleared 
of the debris cast up by the processes of 

[ 32 ] 





Hosea Gault 


building. The temple seemed complete. 

Its interior was as stern as an uncov- 
ered altar; but to the severity of this was 
added a still and compelling beauty, fugi- 
tive from the soul of Hosea Gault. 

A single swift line led the eye from the 
low entrance door to a dais at the room’s 
far end. No break or deviation marred 
this line; its curve was as true as that of a 
bell; nor could the eye be lifted from it. 
One was brought to the foot of the dais as 
by a compelling spiritual force. 

The room was very bare. The dais sup- 
ported neither pulpit nor stand—nothing 
which might serve to conceal the body of 
him who ministered there from the gaze 
of those seated upon the rough wooden 
benches below. Such starkness quickened 
the imagination, as if upon a stage so bare 
a deity might well make dread manifes- 
tation. 

A. period of almost six months was con- 
sumed in the building of the Meeting 
House. The last day of summer brought 
its completion. 

[33 | 





Demigods 


Upon that day, as the sun went down 
upon Granary Ground, Hosea Gault 
drove the workers from the completed 
temple. Throughout the night he touched 
the fabric which he had wrought, laid 
hands in all humility upon these, the em- 
blements of the god which he had cre- 
ated. In this sanctuary, this physical body, 
made by himself, he seems to have been 
quiet and content. Lassitude, of mind as 
well as of body, strangely possessed him. 


The next day was the Dunkard Sab- 
bath. The hour of Meeting had been set 
for noon. 

It would have been interesting to ob- 
serve these sober people upon their way 
to worship. The path curved through the 
lush grass from the white doors of the 
cottages towards Granary Ground, and 
here a fresh-cut road intercepted it, the 
moist, soft loam still crumbling from its 
banks. The turbulent river was upon the 
right, and beyond lay the crystalline 

[ 34 ] 


Hosea Gault 


ridges of the hills, seeming to hold the 
sunlight as in a gigantic bowl. 

In small groups the worshippers took 
their way towards the Meeting House. 
The heads of families, followed by their 
wives and children, moved gravely up the 
little path. A few of the women carried 
babies in their arms, wishing that they too 
should be hallowed by this day. All were 
clad in the soft Dunkard grey that serves 
to distract the eye from the body it en- 
cases. Their passing feet marked the 
black loam of the road and moved at last 
through the pines towards the open doors 
of the Meeting House. 

Within the temple there was utter si- 
lence. One by one the proselytes took 
their seats upon the rough wooden 
benches facing the dais at the room’s end. 
The men sat upon the right; the women 
and children were upon the left. Between 
this division, accentuating it, lay a broad 
aisle leading from door to dais. 

The silence continued for an hour, 
broken only by the ripple of the river 

Fal 


Demigods 


beyond the Meeting House. At the end of 
that time Hosea Gault entered. 

Without preliminary, taking his place 
upon the dais, he began to speak. His 
voice was quieter than ever before; but its 
enormous vibrancy filled the Meeting 
House, engulfing his hearers, making 
them part of it and himself. 

He called upon his proselytes to give 
thanks for the bounties and_ blessings 
which their god had heaped upon them. 
As he spoke his voice increased in vol- 
ume. A latent fire sparkled through it, 
burning the senses. His vast body seemed 
tortured and in travail. 

“Vision is upon me!” he cried. “I am 
in pain and travail. The coming of God is 
almost at hand. Make way for the bull of 
the Lord! Give good ground for his feet. 
Hearken lest ye be tossed upon the terri- 
ble spears of his horns.” 

His voice raised itself, becoming al- 
most a crying. 

‘“T have looked upon the face of God. I 
have known madness. All has become 

[ 36] 


Hosea Gault 


vague before me. I feel the bite of the 
horns upon my body. The bull of God 1s 
at hand: 4 

The doors of the Meeting House sud- 
denly opened. A woman was seen to be 
standing upon the threshold. 

For an instant, poised, she gazed upon 
the Meeting, then fled down the aisle 
towards Hosea Gault, his extended arms 
transfixed in gesture. 

“Help me!” she cried to him. “To the 
river! Run!” 

The worshippers looked to see her 
overwhelmed. For an instant Gault hesi- 
tated; then, bellowed to his people. 

“Out!” he shouted to his astonished 
proselytes. “I command you! Out!” 

The woman turned, but not so quickly 
as Hosea Gault, who leaped down amid 
his people, dragging them to their feet, 
hurling them towards the door. 

Below Granary Ground the Israel 
turns upon itself, creating a deep, wide 
pool. Out of this, upon its further side, 
the river runs as swiftly as through the 

Wer 








Demigods 


sluices of a dam. The white water fore- 
reaches into the pool like a jabbing finger, 
pulling down upon itself and through the 
sluices the debris that has gathered there. 

Above this pool runs the road, curving 
with the river, divided from it only by a 
bank of sand, which the rush of the wa- 
ter threatens to sweep away. 

Upon the bank the woman stopped. In 
the pool, swept by the flood, was a wagon, 
its shafts broken, its tattered curtains 
whipped by the current; but, at the out- 
let, upon his face in the water, lay a man. 
The white current swept over him, streak- 
ing his fallen head with the river debris, 
and, from his body, like a broken bone, 
protruded a black box, a case for a fiddle. 
To this, limply, one of his hands was at- 
tached. 

Hosea Gault seemed to walk through 
the water rather than to swim. Bellowing, 
he rushed upon the waves like a leviathan. 
His head sank from view in the turmoil 
to reappear below the opposite bank. 
Here, he plucked the drowning man from 

[ 38 | 


Hosea Gault 


the jaws of the current, and, throwing 
him like a sack of meal across his shoul- 
ders, clambered up the bank. At the top, 
he paused, the unconscious man slipping 
from his arms. A slow, rocking move- 
ment took his knees, was communicated 
to his waist. He raised his arms, as if he 
were about to cry out, and fell on his face 
in the sand. 

The man whom Gault had rescued, 
retched, vomited river water and whis- 
keyaude ystavcered::to his’ feet, “cursed 
drunkenly, not seeming to notice Gault. 


_ Thus came Hosea Gault to the end of 
his power. Something had broken within 
him. The tension had been too great. The 
events of his fabulous reign had dazzled 
the eyes of the fates, but now sight was re- 
stored to them. 

He himself had prophesied his end. 
The bull of god, as he had cried to his 
people, was at hand. The lassitude which 
he had felt when the Meeting House was 
completed and which had culminated in 

[39 ] 





Demigods 





his sickness at the rescue of Gil Merton, 
the drunken fiddler, bore like lead upon 
him. 

He returned to his forge, but now the 
clangour of the ringing iron was stilled. 
He beat no more upon the anvil. It was as 
if he paused and listened, waiting for an 
inner voice to make his meaning plain. 
He ceased to preach. The colony which 
he had created went on, driven forward 
by the impulse which he had given it. 
Rumor ran current among his proselytes 
which none dared verify. They said that 
their colossus sat at the feet of the fid- 
dier’s daughter. 

She, known to the Dunkards as Aurora 
Merton, was thrust upon Gault by the 
stroke of his titanic destiny. Perfectly, she 
fulfilled it. Her age was sixteen. She pos- 
sessed a cold, still grace, a hardened tran- 
quility. Born in a Northern village, she 
was endowed with a beauty like that of 
snow. Never moving, never speaking, 
could she avoid it, she was like the Virgin 
of the Mountain. 

[ 40 ] 





Hosea Gault 


DIN ORS CE AIRMAN LES ELE ES 

There has been no stranger wooing 
than that of Hosea Gault and Aurora 
Merton. To Gault’s titanic loquacity she 
interposed a greater silence; yet her 
strength was proven to be less resilient, 
less enduring than his own. Their mar- 
riage came to pass within a month. 

For a time Hosea Gault forsook all 
men and wandered over the face of the 
mountains. Late one evening he reached 
the high shoulder of Mount Jefferson, 
where rises the Israel from its little 
spring. Here, upon the South side of the 
mountain, he built a monument, marked 
its head and feet with cairns and in its 
heart left a message for him whom, 
prophetically, he believed would follow 
after. Thereafter, he returned to Boon- 
town. 

The months that followed were a bitter 
memory to the Dunkards. Autumn, its 
quietness a portent, gave way to winter. 
Storm swept storm down the mountains, 
each adding its fury to the stinging air. 
The hills themselves seemed buried in 


[41 ] 





Demigods 


the snow. Ravine and gulch were hidden, 
wiped out in crystalline whiteness. The 
cold was so intense that the Israel was 
frozen to the depth of its bed. Dry bones 
of ice rose above its banks, as if the river 
itself had fallen into some cold, white rot. 
Heaped hillocks of ice lay along the 
shore, which, booming with strange sepul- 
chral sounds, cracked and splintered to 
freeze again. There followed white and 
bitter fog that hung over the land like a 
slow-moving, ever-unrolling pall. 

Throughout these months, Hosea 
Gault, his leaden and dreadful inertia in- 
creasing, did not stir. At times, he seemed 
incapable of making any physical move- 
ment. His remaining strength was fast 
seeping from him, draining with it all 
power, all vision, all of his titan’s genius. 
Throughout the days, he lay or reclined 
in bed or chair. Upon his eyes and fore- 
head darkness was gathering. He seemed 
to be taking part in a dazed and troubled 
dream. 

Bitterness and hardship lay upon the 

[ 42 ] 


Hosea Gault 


Dunkard colony. Their food and fuel had 
run low, nor was there anyone properly 
to allot the little that remained. Among 
them grew schisms, bitter, far-reaching, 
but which a word from Gault could have 
wiped away. They called upon him, but 
he heard nothing; nor did they dare to 
trespass upon his solitude. 

Spring came suddenly. The grey cloud 
that hid the sky was torn asunder. The 
cold vanished almost in a day. The melt- 
ing snow began to move downward from 
the mountain tops. The black tops of the 
dwarf furze were again visible above the 
earth. 

Swiftly the Israel resumed its course. 
It seemed to leap to life, forming its body 
from the ice and snow. Hour by hour, be- 
fore the eyes of the frightened Dunkards, 
it lifted itself up, seeming to boil out of 
the trembling earth. It pounded upon the 
land as if it were shod with iron, broke 
from its shackles of rock and sand, and, 
turning from its course, began to eat its 
way into the heart of the Dunkard earth. 

[ 43 | 





Demigods 


Throughout a second night it rose; trip- 
ling its width, whirling inward in an in- 
ferno of dim and tortured sound. At 
dawn his proselytes came to Hosea Gault. 

They stood in the open space before the 
blacksmith shop and lifted up their voices 
much as the children of the Jews must 
have cried out in an earlier darkness. The 
interior of the shop was dark. There was 
no fire upon the forge, but in the half- 
light of the dawn, was visible against the 
anvil Gault’s great sledge, its nose deep 
buried in the earth of the shack. Beyond 
lay his axe and adze, rusted with the dis- 
use of many days. 

Three times, without an answer, the 
proselytes called upon their prophet. The 
sun’s rim touched the earth, filling the 
mists that rose above the boiling river 
with light. In the silence that followed 
appeared Hosea Gault. 

His vast body was bent and shrunken. 
His shoulders were bowed down as if be- 
neath the pressure of an immeasurable 

[ 44 ] 


Hosea Gault 


weight. He lifted his arms above his head 
and stood, listening. 

Perhaps, as in the past, a hidden voice 
was audible to his ears. His arms fell. 
Swiftly he turned, and took his way along 
the bank of the river towards the Meet- 
ing House. 

The face of the land was covered with 
the rising water. It swirled above the tree 
stumps, cut deep furrows through the 
shaking earth, lashed at the bases of the 
building. Its passage was like a stampede 
of maddened horses. The land rang with 
sound as if under the beat of racing hoofs. 

Through this turmoil moved Hosea 
Gault. His back was lost to sight in the 
rising mists; his waist was hidden in the 
water. Through the land which he had 
created he took his way, beating with his 
great fists upon the timber of the build- 
ings which had withstood the river, 
thrashing and kicking at the beams and 
joists of those which had fallen. It was as 
if he sought to strike the earth to quiet- 
ness, to beat it to submission. He seemed 

[45 ] 





Demigods 


to shout, but of this his followers could 
not be sure, since any sound would have 
been smothered in the roaring of the wa- 
ters. Thus, he came to Granary Ground, 
his proselytes following. 

Below the Meeting House, upon the 
river bank, stood the granary. About it 
lay the waters, which sucked at it with 
monstrous tongues. The ground hissed as 
the river rose upon it. 

Past the granary plunged Hosea Gault. 
His running proselytes saw him halt by 
the white doorway of the Meeting House. 
Below this they gathered. None dared ap- 
proach nearer. 

It was as if he stood in a void which he 
himself had created. Above him was the 
troubled sky, streaked with the light of 
the sun: at his feet ran the tumultous 
river. Piteously, he seemed pinnacled be- 
tween them, as if both were his judges, as 
if both were putting his spirit to the trial, 
to an ordeal of battle. 

In invocation, he lifted his arms tow- 
ards the sky. Little by little, as though 

[ 46 ] 


Hosea Gault 


strength were flowing into his body from 
the hallowed earth, he straightened. It 
was as if he were being made again, 
struck back to life, before the eyes of his 
proselytes. ‘They clung to the land at his 
feet, fearful lest they be swept beyond 
the borders of the imaginable. 

At last he spoke. All his titanic strength 
seemed concentrated in his prayer, an ap- 
peal for a miracle. 

“Lord God of Earth!” he cried. “Cup 
these waters in Thy hand!” 

The river rose upon the ground, lash- 
ing at the feet of the proselytes, driving 
them forward. The granary was engulfed 
upon the tide. 

Three times did Hosea Gault, out of 
the void that encompassed him, call upon 
his god. No miracle was wrought, nor 
change. The river rose, sweeping against 
the rear of the Meeting House, tearing 
the clapboards from the structure, tum- 
bling them along the ground. Hosea 
Gault turned, and with his great fist 
struck blindly at the door of the Meeting 

[47 | 





Demigods 


House, marring the white and polished 
wood. Thereafter, his knees collapsing 
beneath him, he slipped to the ground 
and lay dead. 


Thus came Hosea Gault to the end of 
his destiny. He rests in Granary Ground 
in the shadow of the temple that he cre- 
ated. The mark of his fist still remains in 
the white wood of the door as sign and 
proof that he dared to lift his hand 
against his god. 

Above his grave are cut the true 
words—“The Lord hath His way in the 
whirlwind and the storm and the clouds 
are the dust of His feet.” 

It is said that these words were written 
at the order of his wife, Aurora Merton. 
Three months thereafter, she gave birth 
to a son. Thus, Hosea Gault, revitalized, 
sprang back to earth. 


[48] 





II. JOHN GAULT 





Hosea GAULT, protagonist, struck 
his qualities, intensified, into John, his 
son. Remove Hosea Gault from the chain 
of causation and John Gault could not 
have been. Titans are not pounded out of 
empty air and earth. Not only physically, 
but dramatically, spiritually, John Gault 
serves as the climax, the incentive, for his 
ancestor. Otherwise, Hosea Gault would 
have been colorless, futile. 

John Gault was born in Boontown in 
the midst of a tempest that swept down 
from the ranges of the mountains upon 
an evening in August, 1872. It is said that 
the night during which Hercules was 
conceived was of forty-eight hours’ dur- 
ation. The night upon which John Gault 
was born seemed to endure for a greater 
period, for darkness, over-reaching its 
time, had absorbed a portion of the day. 

Morning had seen the tempest rise. 

[49 ] 





Demigods 


White froth of mist, wind-driven, turbu- 
lent, had writhed above the heights of the 
ranges. In time, the sky darkened as new 
ingredients were stirred into it. This 
chemistry did not pass unnoticed in the 
valley, but as yet it was untouched by 
wind, and the sun still shone brightly 
upon the Dunkard land. 

Then commenced thunder, distant, 
muttering, like giant boulders rumbling 
down the mountain sides, a sounding 
threat that could not be ignored. Little 
by little, darkness devouring day, sky and 
valley were engulfed in a steady haze 
that glittered like brass with the rays of 
the hidden sun. As the hours passed, this 
too was gutted out. Unnatural dusk set- 
tled upon the valley, and through the 
gloom the ranges of the mountains stood 
back like dim and waiting wraiths. 

The Dunkards drove in their cattle, 
prepared their lands for the tempest that 
was to come. The doors of the Meeting 
House were shut and barred. The heaped 
bank of loam at the rear of the building, 

[ 50 ] 





John Gault 


erected since the temple was swept by 
flood, was added to. Thereafter the con- 
gregation, men and women, took their 
way down the long avenue of pines tow- 
ards the dwelling of Aurora Merton. 

Upon the river bank, below the black- 
ened embers of the dead forge, they 
awaited the advent of Hosea Gault, to be 
made manifest in the body of his son. 
There was no sound other than the ripple 
and rush of the Israel, and this seemed 
deadened and suppressed by the gather- 
ing storm. The shack, wherein was Au- 
rora Merton, was shuttered and barred. 
No sign of life was upon it, but from its 
single chimney a wisp of greyish smoke 
rose straight into the windless sky. 

The last of the light failed. The river 
muttered through the darkness, display- 
ing white teeth under the glare of distant 
lightning. The Dunkards drew together 
in the gloom, awestricken, timorous, yet 
unwilling to quit the post which they had 
set themselves. Dim figures stood upon 


ate) 





Demigods 


the bank, drew near the shack, lost in the 
sullen presage of the night. 

Upon the shoulders of Jefferson the 
storm suddenly drummed battle with the 
rolling of a hundred drums. The tempest, 
a white stallion, stamping and neighing, 
rushed down the sky. Hoofs beat upon 
mountains, resounded through the val- 
leys. The earth shook beneath the tread 
of the storm. There followed rain, oblit- 
erating sky, land, and night, creating a 
welter of grey as if heaven itself were in 
running flux. 

As if cast from that invisible sphere 
whence the future projects itself, a force 
of wind, lambent and living, was hurled 
against the door of the shack, splitting it 
open, driving rain and sand across the 
floor, blotting out the single light. From 
this ringing darkness John Gault, new- 
born, set his voice prophetically against 
the fury of the elements. To each beat of 
the tempest he pitted his puny strength, 
striving against it, seeking to extinguish 
it with his cries. In rage he fought the 

[52] 


John Gault 


storm as his father had fought impassable 
mountain and troubled river, and his 
father’s proselytes heard this voice of 
old, bidding them, commanding them to 
its will. One by one, while the tempest 
beat upon the mountains and John Gault 
cried out with empty throat, they entered 
the shack. 

Aurora Merton lay upon the bed in the 
room’s center. She was like a pale taper 
that flame has consumed. The line of her 
body beneath the quilt seemed intangi- 
ble, possessing neither breadth nor thick- 
ness. Her face was touched with the shad- 
ow of a shadow, but beneath this her flesh 
rested pellucid, seemingly transparent. 
Blasted by the passage of vivid life, she 
had remained tranquil and unmoved. 

At the feet of this gentle image lay her 
son, boasting, exultant in his raw vitality. 
Naked and red, with small straining tor- 
so and aimless limbs extended, he groped 
towards her who had given him life, and 
failing in this, shook with treble fury. 

About him the Dunkards grouped 

V53u 





Demigods 


themselves, intent and watchful. The 
room’s single light shook beneath the 
gusts of the tempests, causing fantastic 
shadow to shuttle upon the wall. Aurora 
Merton gave no word or sign. Her eyes 
were open and steady. She seemed con- 
tent. 

John Gault was washed in the water of 
the Israel and his reddened skin blanched 
beneath this cold flood. He fought the 
water with clenched fists, striking it, 
thrusting it from him. 

He was fed. Voracious, biting hunger 
gripped him. Not one breast nor two suf- 
ficed. His was a primordial, bitter hun- 
ger that stifled even his cries and rage. 
Afterwards, for a time, he slept. 


John Gault, christened in the water of 
the Israel, clothed in the flesh of his 
father, was brought to the Meeting 
House at Boontown for the first time 
upon a Sunday in October, 1872. The 
time, even the hour of this event, was 
written in the Book of Days, the perma- 

[54 | 


John Gault 


nent record of the Dunkard colony, 
which for years, ironically—for few of 
the Dunkards could read—was kept, 
opened, upon the dais of the Meeting 
House. The Book of Days, a brief of hu- 
man life, is terse, dramatic. It states, in 
the handwriting of the inscribing elder, 
that John Gault, aged two months, was 
brought before the meeting by his moth- 
er, Aurora Merton. Beneath this is writ- 
ten the single line—‘‘So we praised our 
God.” The words, vital, ringing, pro- 
claim the joy of the Dunkards at the sec- 
ond advent of the blood of Hosea Gault. 

The day possessed the lustre of ivory 
under flame. The land seemed flooded 
with light, impalpable, shimmering, like 
some fine lacquer which deepened in 
color as the sun went down. 

The time of Meeting had been set for 
five o’clock—the hour of sunset. The 
grove of pines that encircled Granary 
Ground was already darkening to shad- 
ow as the Dunkards soberly took their 
way towards the temple of Hosea Gault. 

boyd 





Demigods 


Within the grove was silence which the 
feet of this processional did not break. 
Beyond, the white doors of the Meeting 
House stood open, waiting. 

One by one, the proselytes passed 
within these doors and took their places 
upon the wooden benches below the dais. 
The polished walls which encircled them 
gave back no speech. There was silence 
as the dusk deepened and the sun sank be- 
low the hills. 

Upon the dais sat the seven elders of 
the Dunkards, spade-bearded, straight, 
unbending. These seven had followed 
Hosea Gault throughout the course of his 
hegira, had watched him grow great, 
falter, and die. In silence, reverently, 
they awaited the coming of his son. 

The twilight deepened. The high 
beams of the Meeting House were 
cloaked in shadow, a dome of darkness 
that grew over the heads of the worship- 
pers. The grove grew black against the 
sky, but a modicum of light remained 
upon Granary Ground, tinting the flat 

[ 56 ] 


John Gault 


surfaces of the gravestones with a color 
that was nearly amber, lingering upon 
the grave of Hosea Gault. 

From the darkness of the grove sound- 
ed a plaintive bleating, a tin trumpet 
voice, high and ridiculous. John Gault 
was approaching the house of his father. 

His mother bore him in her arms and 
his swaddling clothes were white against 
the grey of her bosom. His little red face 
was invisible in the semi-darkness, but his 
puckered mouth might be loudly heard. 
Seemingly he was little pleased at the or- 
deal that awaited him. 

Aurora Merton carried herself proud- 
ly: her slender body was erect and sup- 
ple; her burden was light in her arms. 
She bore her son as one might an offering 
to be cast upon the altar of some divin- 
ity, but her hands were unrelinquishing, 
tight upon his flesh. 

Behind these two walked Gil Merton, 
the fiddler, sober, though his body rolled 
upon unsteady legs. In the darkness the 


P57! 





Demigods 


three seemed one, bound together in a 
single physical body. 

John Gault spoke of this, his christen- 
ing, upon a later day. Even obscured by 
time, the episode appealed to his artistry. 
Characteristically, he claimed remem- 
brance even of the details of the cere- 
mony. “In my recollection,” he said, “TI 
was carried across the green and cast with 
the devil into a silver boat, the ark of the 
Dunkard covenant.” 

This was not true. Through the lush 
grass of Granary Ground, touched to sere 
by autumn, Aurora Merton took her way. 
At the grave of Hosea Gault, she paused, 
and John Gault, his progress thus inter- 
rupted, clenched his small fists and cried 
more loudly than before, life boister- 
ously protesting death. Afterwards, moth- 
er and son, Gil Merton following them, 
passed within the doors of the Meeting 
House. 

To the silence of the Meeting was add- 
ed a quality of worship. Through the 
ranks of the Dunkards was visible a slight 

[58 ] 


John Gault 


movement like the ripple of wind 
through grain. Their eyes were bent upon 
the slight figure of Aurora Merton and 
upon the child in her arms. 

Up the wide aisle moved the unique 
procession. John Gault had ceased to cry. 
One small hand gripped tightly the grey 
fabric of his mother’s dress. He regarded 
with widened eyes the ranks of his wait- 
ing people. 

At the feet of the elders Aurora Mer- 
ton halted. Above her loomed the white 
rectangle of the dais like a threatening 
weight. Behind her stood Gil Merton. 
He alone was distinguished from the 
gathering, subject to some state of dis- 
union: all others seemed absorbed, made 
one, in the impending ceremony. 

From the darkness that now obscured 
the platform the elders brought into view 
a cup and bowl—these the silver boat of 
Gault’s stated remembrance. Both were 
of wood, roughened and bleached by use. 
The bowl contained water from the river: 
the cup contained salt, crystalline, gleam- 

[59] 





Demigods 


ing. To these symbols of consecration 
John Gault was offered. 

The scruff of red hair upon his head 
was touched with water. The salt was 
rubbed upon his forehead. Thereat, he 
stiffened his body in his mother’s arms, 
and his penny trumpet voice pealed out, 
protesting this consecration. ‘Three times 
was the ceremony repeated. Each time 
his voice was lifted, then stilled. 

The congregation got to its feet. The 
elders offered prayer—“Our God take 
this lamb into Thy Fold.” Throughout 
it, John Gault remained quiet, seemingly 
inert. [he prayer came to a close. Aurora 
Merton turned, and, with her son in her 
arms, left the space below the dais. Gil 
Merton followed upon shuffling feet. 
The Dunkards watched the three disap- 
pear in the darkness of Granary Ground. 
Thus was John Gault dedicated to the 
Dunkards. 


Within the volume of the Book of 
Days, there is reference to Gil Merton. 
[ 60 ] 


John Gault 


It is under date of 1872, and its probable 
time may be fixed by the dedication of 
John Gault to his father’s godhead. The 
script upon the page of the Book of Days 
is grey with age; the hand is that of Ma- 
thias Ewing, presiding elder of the Dun- 
kards. The writing, ungrammatical, ar- 
chaic, is none the less effective. In itself 
it is an act, a formal transfer of title to 
Gil Merton. He is given land in fee sim- 
ple, by virtue of livery of seisin, proper 
symbolism of the common law, accom- 
panied by deed: 


This may certify that there is layed out 
for Gil Merton, of the Dunkards, a certain 
tract of land situate lying and being on the 
North side of a Branch of the Israel River 
commonly called Christiana Creek thence up 
by this Creek side at 59 Degrees Ely 22 
perches N 29 Degrees Ely 20 perches N 10 
Degrees W by Ely 20 perches on the Creek 
side thence by a Line of Marked Trees 
standing in a line of Hosea Gault’s old land. 
In token of this we have given to Gil Mer- 
ton twig and clod. 


[61 ] 





Demigods 


In the identical transcript written 
above there is decent amazement in the 
phrase—“Gil Merton, of the Dunkards.” 
Gil Merton, ancient realist, is made into 
some semblance of a lamb in the Dunk- 
ard fold. 

Upon the land thus given him Gil Mer- 
ton erected, without speech or the assist- 
ance of his neighbors, a shack fronting 
upon the line of dwarfed apple trees 
which ran ‘to ‘the forest, |‘ thesew the 
“Marked Trees” of the Book of Days. 
The brawling river was at his feet. At his 
back were the heights of the ranges. He 
rested between the two in an iron tran- 
quility. 

His old-time habits remained un- 
changed, incorruptible, though he in- 
dulged them far from Boontown and the 
Dunkard colony. He would be gone from 
his land for days at a time. Once, at mid- 
night, at the ford below the village, he 
was heard trolling loud songs to the stars 
as he took his way home. 

He did not again enter Meeting, but 

[ 62 ] 


John Gault 


his small gnarled figure might be seen be- 
fore the door of his shack. His violin 
straddled upon his knees, the bow lying 
idle beside him, he plucked at the strings, 
never lifting the instrument to his chin, 
and from the tingling gut superimposed 
new melodies upon the harmony of the 
river. For hours at an end, he would sit 
thus, behind his eyes an indefinite, unde- 
finable question and jest. ‘To him his vio- 
lin was an instrument of meditation. 
Throughout his life he was a thorn in 
the flesh of the Dunkards. Certainly, in 
this respect John Gault was kindred to 
him. He believed in nothing, did noth- 
ing, but cast himself ironically upon the 
lap of life, and received well from it. In 
essence he was a jester and would have 
done well at the court of some tough- 
hearted, Rabelaisian king. Profane, indo- 
lent, a musician who never played, brown 
as a berry, he was like some gnome cast 
up from the bosom of a lazy earth to 
plague the industrious and well-mean- 
ing. At some time in his early manhood, 
[ 63 | 





Demigods 


in an unknown capacity, he had served 
in court, and therein had learned the 
lawyer’s typical hypothetical question. 
These questions he applied to Hosea 
Gault as some part of an elemental jest— 
“Could Gault have lifted any stone? Did 
Gault actually turn the course of the 
river? Did he thrash at the door of the 
Meeting House and strike his God in the 
face by a blow of his fist upon the panel 
of the door? If this were so, why did not 
Hosea Gault’s God strike Hosea Gault 
dead P” 

These questions and others, to the an- 
ger of the Dunkards, he propounded in 
his garden to whomever might hear. He 
would pluck his fiddle for an answer 
were none other given him. “Hear it 
speaker” he would say. “An answer as 
eternal as the mountains—good as any 
other. Hear its woman’s voice. Can a 
Dunkard look at a woman?” 

Certainly John Gault was bred from 
his maternal ancestor as well as from his 
father. The vein of his authentic genius 

[ 64 | 


John Gault 


was split by laughter. His rage was Ho- 
sea Gault’s. 

In his childhood, John Gault early 
found the sanctuary of Gil Merton’s gar- 
den and the relief it afforded him from 
the pressure of his living godhead as the 
son of Hosea Gault. He wrote of this 
pressure in later years without bitterness, 
but with feeling. “Can a god grow fat?” 
he asks. “Certainly I would have per- 
formed a miracle to have saved myself 
from the obesity that has overtaken me.” 

He would sit in the garden with Gil 
Merton, his small reddened knees tucked 
towards his chin, his solid little torso 
backed against the wall of the shack. 
John Gault at this time resembled a small 
red bear. Deep of chest, sturdy of limb, 
at this time, aged five, he seemed to have 
been moulded from some single block of 
red metal. This metal seemed imbued 
with indomitable energy. The child’s ap- 
petites were huge, gargantuan. It is re- 
lated that he ate as much as any man. His 
days were spent along the river bank or 

[65 ] 


Demigods 


in climbing the trees at the rear of his 
grandfather’s shack. In this orchard sud- 
denly occurred catastrophe. 


The line of apple trees was a straight 
one, cast like.an arrow from bank to for- 
est. The last of the line was the greatest, 
raised upon a knoll above the rest, a point 
of lookout from which the valley rolled 
out like a curtain. By some peculiarity of 
nature, perhaps because of the more arid 
soil in which its roots were planted, it 
was the last to bear fruit. ‘The burden of 
the lesser trees was despoiled by the pick- 
ers or lay rotting upon the ground before 
this last great tree bore fruit. hen, upon 
the curving fan of its limbs, appeared ap- 
ples of a perfect mould, unusual in size 
and tenderness, but endowed with this 
peculiarity. Their skins were striped with 
black like a tiger’s hide, stencilled upon 
faint pink flesh. They had a look of poi- 
son. 

This strange, sultry fruit was near to 
being the cause of John Gault’s death. 

[ 66 ] 


John Gault 


The episode presents the quality of an al- 
legory. 

The Dunkards were burning brush, 
clearing the land through the September 
drought. The smoke of their fires hung 
like a pungent dust above the valley. No 
one was in sight. All were resting through 
the hot, still afternoon. 

John Gault, having sailed three chips, 
a great argosy, down the shallow waters 
of the Israel, took his way towards the or- 
chard, whence he had been forbidden to 
go. The striped fruit of the apple tree he 
considered to be his own. As long as he 
could remember he had gathered it, held 
towards the lowest bough in his grand- 
father’s arms. This year he meant to eat 
his fill. 

He stretched his arms up the boll of 
the tree towards the lowest limb and was 
unable to reach it. He girded the trunk 
with small knees and arms and little by 
little pulled himself up the tree. At the 
great gnarled angle, where the boughs 
parted, he did not pause for breath, but 

[ 67 ] 





Demigods 


kept steadily up, excited more by the 
height to which he had risen than by the 
fruit which lay at his hands. 

At the top of the tree, pinnacled by a 
mat of leaves, was a single apple, striped 
belly glowing in the sun. Towards it 
John Gault stretched a small, greedy 
hand. He could not reach it. Without 
pause, heedless of the crackling and 
bending of the limbs, he climbed higher. 
The surface of the tree was like an in- 
verted bowl beneath him. One arm out- 
stretched, he swayed against the sun. 

Gil Merton, emerging from the door 
of his shack, watched him in horror. He 
cried out and ran forward. 

John Gault did not turn his head or 
cease to climb. He straddled the limb 
with small, tense knees, inching his way 
towards the apple, which swung still be- 
yond his reach. The limb bent and quiv- 
ered like a drawn bow. A crackling fol- 
lowed. 

A yellow wound appeared upon the 
trunk, growing instantly wider. John 


[ 68 ] 





John Gault 


Gault looked down, looked swiftly up. 
He swung his arm forward, reached for 
the apple, grasped it. The act was calcu- 
lated, premeditated, scornful of the earth 
beneath him. 

The limb split from the trunk, hurling 
itself forward like a cast spear. John 
Gault fell sheerly, incredibly from his 
zenith to the earth beneath. Even as he 
fell he made no sound and his small fing- 
ers were tight upon the fruit which he 
had plucked. 

The land beneath the tree sloped tow- 
ards the river. The grass was rank and 
high. John Gault’s body struck, seeming- 
ly rebounded, lay still, enmeshed in the 
grass. Gil Merton carried him in his arms 
to his mother’s shack. Thus came the war- 
rior home from his first field. 

For a period of over forty hours he lay 
without movement, without apparent 
breath, seemingly without life. His small 
body seemed prepared to return to red 
dust again. It was as if he were balanced 
upon some mute fate, which weighed and 

[ 69 ] 





Demigods 


tested him, determining his ultimate des- 
tiny. 
Thereafter, life returned to him, slow- 
ly at first, then with the swiftness of an 
unconquerable tide. 


Like the titan of the fable, John Gault 
seemed to take new strength from the 
earth to which he had been thrown. In 
the few years that followed the episode 
of the apple tree, his small red body, 
heightened, fattened, prepared to erect 
that tower from which he was to look 
down upon men. 

Red was his color as it was his father’s. 
His skin seemed touched with some pig- 
ment struck from clay. In him the val- 
leys of Lebanon and Israel combined 
their earth. Having lain fallow for a 
time, his body and sinew quickened to 
life. In a few years his stature doubled. 

The stamp of these years is plain upon 
the Book of Days. There is a record of a 
testament and a Drobaugh’s Arithmeti- 
cal Tables purchased for John Gault in 

[ 70 ] 


John Gault 


1883. These two volumes seem to com- 
prise the elements of his education. There 
is also an account of a garment suitable 
for wear upon days of Meeting being 
made for him, and, at this time, he is pre- 
sented with the straight-brimmed Dunk- 
ard hat, a symbol of advancing age. He 
was then eleven years old. 

The two volumes, stated above, cover 
the field of John Gault’s early education. 
His study of the testaments was caused 
to be exhaustive, particularly of those 
chapters which related to the journey of 
the children of Israel from the bondage 
of Pharoah. These chapters had grown 
into the legend of Hosea Gault, and were 
believed by the Dunkards to prophesy the 
actual hegira completed by Gault to the 
Valley of the Israel. Otherwise, too, the 
beliefs of the Dunkards were unique. 
John Gault was taught that the earth was 
flat, that sun and firmament moved at the 
behest of earth. No system of geography 
was ever taught to him, none of language. 
“T did not know that there was a sea,” he 


C7a) 





Demigods 


stated later. “But, atavistically, I got 
through to it when I could.” His mind, 
immensely curious, was compelled to lie 
prostrate through these years. 

To the Dunkards the world literally 
was unknown. The limits of their coun- 
try were the limits of their journey from 
the Valley of the Lebanon. Creeds, laws, 
changes, passed them by. In the Book of 
Days, an episode of John Gault’s educa- 
tion is presented. Tersely, it stands out 
upon the page. “John Gault this day tore 
his testament, casting it from him.” 
There follows the account of his punish- 
ment, five blows upon the palms of his 
hands. There is no comment, no word of 
word from John Gault, but one gathers 
some hint of the quality of his silence. 
Vividly, he presents himself, standing 
before the elders’ table in crowded Meet- 
ing. His reddened skin is flushed. His 
body is tensed. His palms are extended 
for punishment. The flat sound of the 
falling rod, the stillness that followed it, 
must have been portentous. Knowing 

[72 ] 





John Gault 


Gault as he was known in later days, be- 
ing aware of his wild rage at anything 
that pointed out, or offered debasement 
to, his body, one wonders at his silence. 
At the age of eleven, he must have at- 
tempted to treat these proceedings with 
the contemptuous ennui, with which later 
he was accustomed to cloak his overpow- 
ering rage. 

In his early days, as throughout his 
life, he presents to us his passion for the 
impossible. His happiest hours were 
spent with Gil Merton. Each dusk was 
spent at the feet of the fiddler. When 
darkness was falling upon the ranges, 
John Gault would return to Merton, his 
small beady eyes gleaming, his hands 
clenched. He would be subject to a wild 
hunger of which he himself was scarce- 
ly aware. “There is something mys- 
terious in the mountains,” he would say 
to Merton. ‘What do you see there?” 'To 
him, invariably, Merton would make the 
same reply, couched in identical words— 
“All blackness and dark.” 

[ 73 ] 





Demigods 


The two, by their invariable custom, 
then would talk. 

“What is it you wish, John?” Gil Mer- 
ton would ask. 

“T do not know.” 

“You seek your world! I am old and 
drunken and cannot help you, but this I 
know. Your father was a god. You must 
be like him. He was proud, swift, re- 
vengeful, scorning mankind, plucking a 
people from one wilderness to place 
them in another. He served them with his 
strength, gave them his body to devour, 
while contemning them. Thus, was he 
true to his godhead.” 

To the fiddler, John Gault would lis- 
ten silently. 


At the age of twelve, an effort was 
made to require John Gault to work in 
the fields with the other boys of the Dun- 
kard faith. He was ordered to glean the 
fields after the reapers had passed and the 
wheat had been gathered so that no grain 
might escape the granaries of the Dun- 

[ 74 ] 


John Gault 


kards. From this labor invariably he ran 
away. No punishment sufficed to keep 
him at it. Again and again he was cited 
to the Meeting and forced to undergo the 
penalty of the rod. 

There is no doubt that in time he 
viewed the weight of this proceeding 
with ribald humor. Once, waiting in 
Meeting for punishment, he heard an el- 
der speak concerning a vision of Hosea 
Gault’s. He lost no time. “I, too, am with 
vision,” he gravely declared. ‘““Which in 
due time, I shall make plain to you.” The 
consternation which greeted this utter- 
ance astonished him. The Dunkards at 
this time desired no further visions. They 
were becoming a stabilized community, 
strong in their homes, and Hosea Gault 
was confirmed in godhead, less disturbing 
as a god than as a man. None the less the 
memory of Gault’s great arm, his red- 
dened skin, his blasting rage, seemed 
close in the presence of his son. None 
dared evoke him as John Gault had done. 
Upon this day John Gault escaped pun- 

Ly al 





Demigods 





ishment, nor was he required again to 
work in the fields. 

This jest seems to have pleased him. 
Again and again, in his later years, he re- 
counted it. “I would have dared to have 
created a vision for them,” he is reported 
to have said. “I am sure of it.” 

In these years he attended his first 
Meetings at Granary Ground, sat with 
outward content among the Dunkard 
boys in that portion of the Meeting 
House reserved for them, watched and 
wondered. 

The juniors sat upon the extreme right 
of the building. Two aisles, upon front 
and side, separated them from the elders’ 
benches. A curving window, framed in 
white wood, was at their backs, and this 
gave upon Granary Ground. 

John Gault’s seat was near this win- 
dow. At his back were the stones of Gran- 
ary Ground and the dark ring of the for- 
est beyond. The sunlight illumined the 
Meeting House, rushed in flood up the 
straitness of the aisles, caused the slow 

[ 76 ] 


John Gault 





words spoken by the elders upon the dais 
to seem touched with gold. 

Throughout the hours of service John 
Gault sat motionless. No spirit moved 
him to speech: none scarcely, to dream. 
About him centered expectancy, a tension 
of waiting as though his father’s people 
hearkened for the sound of his voice. Of 
this he felt aware, but made no move- 
ment, gave no sign. Forces were gather- 
ing within him, forming themselves for 
a definite end. He might bear this wait- 
ing. 

It should be noted upon this record 
that Gault’s last appearance in formal 
Meeting of the Dunkards was in June, 
1886. He was then within a few months 
of his fourteenth birthday. There is no 
specific note upon the Book of Days of 
his dismissal from the congregation. A 
single line speaks of him, however. The 
words are incredibly brief when one re- 
alizes what they portend, and are like a 
wailing and a curse. Their speech is near- 
ly silence—“‘Eheu! The blood of Hosea 

77 





Demigods 


Gault—” Drunken, profligate, avaricious, 
extraordinary as Gault afterwards be- 
came, he never forgot this phrase, and ad- 
mitted with sorrow that specifically it was 
applied to him. 

The force which caused his rupture 
with the Dunkards was becoming appar- 
ent at this time. Born under the charla- 
tan’s star which permits no ease, so rest- 
less that his restlessness became like a 
disease of the nerves, Gault was like a 
lion amid ewes. He was like the child of 
an alien to the Dunkards. Clever, un- 
scrupulous, utterly naive, born with that 
love of beauty that had fled from the soul 
of Hosea Gault, nothing in life could en- 
chain him. Circumscribed by the hills 
which evoked his mysticism, tormented 
by doubt, his hunger was to touch, to feel, 
to see. The perpetual madness of his soul 
impelled him towards ends of which he 
was unaware. 

To these elements there was added a 
misadventure of birth that tormented 
him. Endowed, even at this early age, 

[78 ] 





John Gault 


with surpassing vanity, in appearance he 
was becoming hideous. His body was 
red, huge, overwhelming his years. For 
his age he was very strong. His hair was 
a thatch of red, as had been his father’s. 
His hands were as large as any man’s. His 
face was becoming broadened by the flesh 
that lay upon it. His mouth was in pro- 
portion. Only his head remained to satis- 
fy him. This was vast, magnificent, the 
head of a colossus or of a genius. 

To these defects was put another which 
troubled him more than all others. His 
voice, generally fluted, sweet, compelling, 
at times dwindled to a shrill piping that 
was in essence effeminate and ridiculous. 
This sound caused him to flee, rendered 
him incapable of speech, and through 
shame, almost paralyzed the strength of 
his limbs. To it he never referred. In later 
years, he might jest about his poe 
never, concerning his voice. 


In the fall of his fourteenth year, John 
Gault, accompanied by Gil Merton, fled 
[79 | 








Demigods 


from Boontown, was gone for a period of 
three days, and returned drunk. Upon the 
road below Granary Ground, he vomited 
and collapsed. Gil Merton, old adven- 
turer, attempted to carry him secretly to 
his shack, was discovered by a Dunkard 
farmer as Merton crossed the river with 
the boy in his arms. The farmer re- 
ported the occurrence to the Meeting. 

Gil Merton, fiddler, prepared to play 
his last tune. Drenched to the marrow of 
his drunken bones by his passage of the 
icy river, his vitality gone, he took to his 
bed, talked deliriously of his youth and 
of the past as his fever mounted and 
death reached for him. John Gault loyal- 
ly nursed and cared for him. 

What action was portended by the 
Dunkards is not known. Gault was or- 
dered to keep himself with Merton, to 
have no traffic with anyone except for the 
purpose of securing the necessities of life. 
Both were rendered pariah; both, or- 
dered to stand together. They were to be 

[ 80 ] 


John Gault 


required to answer to the next day of 
Meeting. 

An episode intervenes, cast and pro- 
jected from that sphere where the future 
forms itself. 

Below Boontown, beyond Granary 
Ground, upon the edge of the Israel, was 
the Dunkard grist mill. Here, a bend in 
the stream gave opportunity for a dam, a 
race and sluices. The mill itself was upon 
the left of the stream, a rough timbered 
building, supporting upon its side a 
wheel which turned and fluttered in the 
sunlight like a fantastic butterfly. 

The mill was shadowed by the hill be- 
hind it, causing the interior of the build- 
ing to be cool and dark, making the two 
great stones upon the grinding floor, en- 
meshed and interlocked, grind and grate 
in the semi-darkness. At a distance the 
mill was heard in vast and somber voice, 
so constant, so monotonous, that time and 
day seemed beaten, bent to the heavy 
beam that moved within its walls. 

A path, curving with the line of river, 


[81 ] 





Demigods 


ran to the door of the mill. Thence, the 
wood of the floor was worn smooth to the 
grinding pit. The huge mill beam came 
down like a tireless arm, revolving in the 
cup of the stones. 

The grain, ripe, tingling, rushed down 
the hopper to the upper stone, was seized 
in melting piles, swirled slowly in be- 
tween the wheels as into a closed and 
cavernous mouth, which tightened upon 
it with slow avidity. The grinding sound 
increased: the stone jaws champed to- 
gether. The wheat cried out as its sub- 
stance was devoured. This ceased. Upon 
the rim of the lower stone the flour seeped 
out, shaking, vibrating, with the grinding 
of the wheels. From this, impalpable, 
scarcely to. be seen, rose dust of flour, cov- 
ering the stones, coating the ponderous 
beam, seeping like a dew through the fab- 
tric of the building until no crevice or 
opening, no particle of wood or stone was 
without this white enchantment. 

The miller, Richard Duncan, had been 
a member of the Dunkard colony only 


[ 82 ] 





John Gault 


since the hegira of Hosea Gault. In ap- 
pearance he resembled a stub of iron- 
wood. He was short, strong, thick, a man 
of strict harsh principle. Gil Merton had 
incurred his enmity and contempt. 

By nature and habit Duncan, the mil- 
ler, was industrious. Daylight found him 
at work. He stopped at dusk. He labored 
as ceaselessly as his mill wheel turned. 
Breast-deep in grain, he prepared the 
wheat for the grinding, lifted upon his 
shoulders the full bags, strained against 
their weight. The white dust of flour 
sifted above his head, penetrated his 
clothing, soaked his skin—in the half- 
darkness of the mill caused him to re- 
semble a laborious and smutted troll. 

He rested only while his mill ground. 
Then, seated in the grinding pit, his hand 
upon the lower stone, trying its heat, he 
listened to the voice of wheat and stone 
intermingled in a cacophony of anguish. 

To this mill, John Gault, during his 
own and Merton’s outlawry, brought two 
bags of wheat to be ground. The grain 

[ 83 ] 





Demigods 


was the property of Gil Merton, allotted 
to him out of the Dunkard store for his 
bread during the coming month. The to- 
tal amount of wheat was about a bushel 
and a half. Thus, exactly was to be paid 
the price of John Gault’s emancipation. 
It was- almost evening when John 
Gault appeared upon the high bank 
above the mill. The great wheel fluttered 
with a faint splashing of water; the grind- 
ing of the stones seemed subdued. In this 
quietness was the portent of catastrophe. 
John Gault carried the bags of grain 
upon his shoulders, his arms braced to 
their weight. The light of the sinking sun 
caused his body to run red, incarnadining 
his skin, his hands which held the bags. 
The interior of the mill was deep in 
shadow as he entered. The upper reaches 
of the great beam were invisible, and 
through the dust of the grinding its lower 
portion stabbed down like a pointing fin- 
ger. 
In the shadow of the beam, upon the 
edge of the grinding pit, sat the miller. 
[ 84 | 


John Gault 


His head was bent, his arms were out- 
stretched above the wheel. He seemed to 
nurse and guard his mill in the torment 
of its mastication. 

Upon the edge of the pit, at the miller’s 
feet, John Gault placed the bags of grain. 
Time passed, while the note of the grind- 
ing stones increased in volume, becoming, 
as the grain was devoured, shrill and an- 
guished. The load was consumed: the 
sound grew brittle, harsh. The miller 
clambered from the pit. 

There ensued a brief colloquy, which 
should be recorded here. 

“What you want?” 

“This grain ground.” 

“Who fore” 

Mon. Gils”? 

“T grind no grain for Gil, nor for you, 
nor for any drunken spawn from Hosea 
Gault’s dung heap. Take it away.” 

John Gault made no reply, stood as if 
rooted to the ground. “A change was 
coming over me,”. he later said. “The 
blood was pounding against my temples, 

[385 ] 





Demigods 


and I had for the first time a thought 
which throughout my life has reiterated 
itself in my mind. It spoke then—‘You 
are always on the wrong side—always on 
the side that is beaten. Flee, while you 
may!’ I believe that if I had followed 
that impulse the course of my life would 
have been changed. Suddenly, however, 
it was plain to me that the side which I 
had taken was in fact my side—that out- 
cast, disreputable, blind, I was meant to 
be. I paused to think of this.” 

Not so the miller, however. For an in- 
stant he stood before John Gault. Then 
bent and loosened the cords that bound 
the mouths of the bags. Swiftly he rose, 
grasping the sacks at their bottoms, and 
with a gesture like a flagellation, hurled 
them over his shoulder. The tingling 
grain sprayed upon the boards, rushed 
like quicksilver through the dust, was 
forever lost and ruined upon the floor. 

There followed a curious interlude. 
Some prophecy informing him, the mil- 
ler stood transfixed and motionless, wait- 

[ 86 ] 


John Gault 


ing for that which was about to come to 
pass. 

John Gault took breath in some new 
birth, found voice in it, shouted terribly. 

Flailing with his arms, he flung him- 
self at the miller, knocking him into the 
pit. His back bowed against the pit’s 
edge under the force of the rush. Shout- 
ing, Gault turned, and grasping Duncan 
by the throat, attempted to thrust his 
head beneath the turning mill wheel. 
Duncan fell. The rough stone cut skin 
and scalp, making the miller’s head run 
with blood, dazing him. Ceaselessly Dun- 
can screamed. 

Throat to throat, hand to hand, they 
struggled in the semi-darkness, the great 
beam flailing above them. From the im- 
pact of the timber, from the grinding of 
the wheel, John Gault seemed to take 
new strength, new fury. 

They were interrupted when reapers, 
returning from the fields, rushed into the 
mill. The miller’s body was limp in John 

[87 ] 


Demigods 


Gault’s arms, and life had nearly been 
beaten from him. 

Throughout that night, John Gault, 
like his father before him, gave no 
thought to the man he had injured. A new 
spirit, marking his emancipation, burned 
within him. ‘The breath of his genius was 
hot upon his soul. Pressed against the 
bars of the grain crib in which he was im- 
prisoned, he begged for Gil Merton to 
liberate him, longed only to set foot in 
freedom upon his world. 

At dawn Gil Merton passed into ex- 
tremis, died. An hour later, the Dun- 
kards, coming to bring John Gault to 
punishment, found the bars of the crib 
broken, and John Gault gone. 

At dawn the ranges of the mountains 
had come before his eyes. Possessed by 
some instinct, atavistic yet original, he 
had gotten through to them. 

High upon the shoulder of Mount Jef- 
ferson the spring of the Israel seeps 
through a field of moss, gathering current 
with its passage. The void of the sky is 

[ 88 ] 





John Gault 


above it; the grey buttress of the moun- 
tain is at its sides. Its current runs to the 
edge of the ravine, and, from there, sheer- 
ly, hurls itself into the void beneath. 
Sound, a whisper of sound, possesses it as 
it falls. Its substance parts, becoming a 
skein, dissolving into mist as it denies the 
height. Upon clear days it glitters like a 
sword throughout the valley. 

It shone before the eyes of John Gault 
far down the Israel. To him it became a 
symbol of something which he must en- 
compass, make his own. 

Before him lay a field of corn, almost 
ripe for cutting. The tasseled ears, buried 
in silk, were high above John Gault’s 
head as he entered it. His body was lost in 
the tall yellow stalks. 

Between the furrows, the stalks rising 
like a wall, was an open path running 
towards the river, and at its end, upon 
the height of the mountain, hung the dis- 
tant sword of the waterfall. 

Towards it John Gault set his face at 
dawn. The Valley of the Israel was still 

[ 89 ] 





Demigods 


deep in fog, rolling like a river around 
the bases of the smaller hills, but the 
great range was bare. A glow, faint but 
iridescent, like dark pearl, cloaked it. 

His red body forced a passage through 
the underbrush. The river lay upon his 
right, a barrier between himself and the 
Dunkards. 

The sun dispelled the last of the roll- 
ing mists and set the ridges of the moun- 
tains against the sky. The river took col- 
or, reflecting grey basalt or pine. The 
land rose steadily, little by little at first, 
then precipitously, lifting itself towards 
that sheer parapet that rimmed the hori- 
zon. 

John Gault never ceased to climb. His 
pace was slow at first, carefully sustained, 
measured to the distance which he must 
traverse, but as the morning passed and 
the miles fell behind him, his mood 
changed. It became one of exaltation, al- 
most of frenzy. A chemistry of freedom, 
working within him, overwhelmed him, 
drove him near to madness. It was as if 

[ 90 ] 


John Gault 


he drank of some bitter, anguishing wat- 
er, but the draught was stinging, vital- 
izing. | 

He began to run, slowly at first, then 
heedless of the obstacles which lay before 
him. His reddened body streamed with 
sweat. His lungs took air above his 
pounding heart. The land fell back, roll- 
ing itself out in ravine and slope black 
with timber. The river, now little more 
than a white and tumbling thread, leaped 
down towards the valley. 

John Gault did not look back. Some 
persuasion stronger than his will held and 
possessed him. This he could not break, 
nor cared to. Throughout that day, with- 
out pause or break, subject to some ani- 
mation that transcended his own strength, 
he struggled on. Dusk found him at the 
foot of that great ravine which cuts the 
side of Jefferson, and the Israel, at his 
feet, was a small and boisterous stream. 
He sank down exhausted beside it and 
cooled his body in its current. 

The range deepened in color, the 


[91 ] 





Demigods 


heights becoming amber. The buttress of 
Jefferson was a somber pyramid. The 
ravine alone, a red vein against dark flesh, 
contained light, throwing into relief its 
sheer declivity. Pinnacles of rock, bal- 
anced upon darkness, hung above the 
abyss; but upon the shoulder of the moun- 
tain the waterfall glittered like a faint 
and falling sword. 

With a resurgence of energy, John 
Gault set his feet upon his way. This was 
his path and his body was bent to it. This 
was his journey to his world, the begin- 
ning of his inevitable and destined hegira. 
The destiny which encompassed him 
measured him against his future estate. 

The way was precipitous, balanced 
like a knife edge upon the side of the 
ravine. The air grew chill: the timber 
fell away: he mounted over sheerest stone. 
At dawn his exhausted body, consumed by 
its strange ardour, reached the pinnacle 
of the mountain. As day lightened cities 
dimly envisaged, felt by him to be his 

[ 92 ] 


~ John Gault 


own, he slept. Thus came John Gault to 
the edge of his world. 

It was nearly evening of the second day 
when he returned to Boontown. Dusk was 
settling upon the ranges, coloring the for- 
ests with failing light. Village and clear- 
ing were stark and empty in the twilight 
as he entered upon them. 

At the head of the deserted street John 
Gault took his stand and shouted. There 
was no answer to his call. The echoes of 
his voice died away in the stillness of the 
advancing night. 

Upon the road that led to Granary 
Ground, above the light fringe of trees 
that cloaked the way, rose a faint column 
of dust, grey against the sky. There was 
the rustle of feet upon the grasses. John 
Gault hurried on. 

Darkness increased. All sound died 
away. The stillness was utter, complete as 
John Gault emerged into the clearing be- 
yond the Meeting House. 

Beyond that wall that divided the dead 
in Granary Ground, around a grave 

[93 | 


Demigods 


opened in the earth, stood the Dunkards 
in full Meeting. Upon the limber of an 
ox-cart, uncovered, uncloaked, in starkest 
simplicity, lay the coffin of Gil Merton, 
dead to his sorrow. 

Even as John Gault looked the coffin 
was closed, lowered into the earth, and as 
he perceived this the dead past slipped 
from him. His stature suddenly was that 
of a man, and as he stretched himself his 
hands were upon the mountains. 

His anger remained. Swiftly he turned 
and ran through the ranks of the Dun- 
kards. Their eyes upon him, he vanished 
into darkness. The son of Hosea Gault 
went forth as had his father. 

At dawn he lay upon the further side 
of the peak of Jefferson. There, as day 
lightened the barren tundra upon which 
he stood, he perceived a great figure of 
heaped moss and boulder, prone upon the 
earth, vast but dim in outline, a sign left 
by Hosea Gault for him who should fol- 
low after. The hands of this figure were 

[94 ] 





John Gault 


set in a colossal gesture of stone towards 
the south. 

“Y embraced this figure,” Gault has 
written. “Recognized it as my father’s— 
laughed and cried with such an uproar 
that when I had ceased the returning still- 
ness of the mountain side frightened me. 
Not even my first sight of the sea affected 
me as much as did my sight of this statue. 
Finally I turned and fled, laughing and 
weeping as I ran down the mountain 
side.” 

So Gault entered his world. 


[95] 





III. JOHN GAULT’S JOURNEY 


U/Pon GAULT'S debacle in 1913, a 
petition in involuntary bankruptcy hav- 
ing been filed against him, a number 
of his creditors endeavored to look into 
his past and to go behind his known his- 
tory. His trustee traced Gault back to 
his youth in Philadelphia, presumed that 
he had been born there. Gault himself 
had obscured his origin by many conflict- 
ing stories concerning himself. In these 
he took a romantic pleasure, said what he 
pleased, and took no care that they be not 
in derogation either of his honor or in- 
tegrity. For example, once at a formal 
dinner, to which he had been at pains to 
be invited, in a lull of the conversation, 
he remarked that he was well born, in 
fact had been born in the gutter of the 
best street in Shanghai. Upon another oc- 
casion, he informed Stackpole, managing 
editor of one of his newspapers, that he 
[ 96 ] 





John Gault’s Journey 


was in fact English, had been at school at 
Eton, had entered Sandhurst and the 
army. In proof of which he showed a 
small decoration, an order of merit won 
by him during battle. This, upon inspec- 
tion, proved to be a medal commemorat- 
ing the fall of Bloemfontein to the Brit- 
ish during the Boer War. When this was 
pointed out to Gault, he laughed and 
stated that the differences between what 
he had done and what he might have 
done were small. 

These stories are true and are un- 
touched by his biographer. They illus- 
trate Gault’s gargantuan humor, his dis- 
regard for the details of fact, his acute 
feeling for the essential verities concern- 
ing himself. He might well have been 
born and lived as he said. But concerning 
his coming to Philadelphia, he has said 
little. The investigation brought forth but 
few facts, and these were impertinent to 
the law, though pertinent to his life. 

Gault set foot upon the streets of Phila- 
delphia for the first time early upon an 

[97] 





Demigods 


evening in August, 1887. He entered 
upon the river side, thrown from the deck 
of a coasting steamer. 

The arc of his fall was a broad one, 
from the curving line of the ship’s stern 
to the black water of the Delaware. Head 
over heels, spinning, he made it, thrown 
over the ship’s side by the mate’s arm. 

The steamer loomed blackly above 
him as he came to the surface. The shore 
was a darker line beyond. The mate, lean- 
ing upon the rail, cursed him heavily for 
a stowaway, scum of the sea and worth- 
less whelp of land. John Gault, enraged, 
shouted back. 

The water, oily, salt, stung his nostrils, 
swallowed him, caused him to gasp and 
sink. Fighting blindly, he came to the 
surface. Before him, floating with the 
tide, was a balk of timber. John Gault 
seized it, and, resting upon it, took breath 
again. 

The river was growing dark. Above 
the surface of the water hung smoke and 
fog in a thin film. Lights, twinkling like 

[98 ] 





John Gault’s Journey 


dim candles, pierced it, flickered, winked, 
and disappeared. The dusk was full of 
sound, the shrill piping of a tug, the rat- 
tling of chains upon a ferry slip, and the 
hoarse note, blasting, immense, of a river 
siren. Beyond the darkness of the stream, 
row after row of lights grew, shimmered, 
and moved out upon the river as a liner 
went down to sea. 

John Gault, pushing the balk of timber 
before him, swam steadily for the shore. 
The pull of the tide swung him against a 
pier. Grasping the piles he worked his 
way inland. A wall, upon which the tide 
slapped, marked the edge of the river. 
From this, he rose like some creature of 
them river \cocene, \unheard\’ of; »e10- 
tesque, and stood upon the land. 

With the sinking sun at his back, his 
redness of body was accentuated. He 
seemed feerique, uncanny, a puff of flesh 
cast up by some temporary spawn of the 
river. His red mane swirled back upon 
his forehead. His tattered clothing hung 
in shreds upon his body. His head was 

[99 | 





Demigods 


lifted as he took breath. His eyes were 
wild with excitement. Dripping, trem- 
bling, the great balk of timber in his 
hands, he seemed like a glittering triton 
thrown up at a red dusk from the bed of 
the river. 

In a measure he was afraid. The deep 
mutter of the resting city, sounding like a 
drum, drew and alarmed him. The broad 
artery of Market Street, dimly lit at its 
base, lightened upon the hill, grew incan- 
descent, yellowed with distance, faded to 
the small lights on top of the bronze 
Penn above the City Hall. The city was 
shortly to wake. The first sounds of that 
awakening were audible to John Gault. 

He listened, quivering. His eyes sought 
the pinnacles of the lights, searched out 
the darker valleys beneath. The city, a 
giant whose breath was sound, whose 
eyes were lamps, turned upon its side, 
and seemed to hearken for his tread. 

With the balk of timber before him 
like a club, almost naked of body, 
stripped to the skin of his spirit, in fear 

[ 100 ] 





John Gault’s Journey 


and a delight of curiosity, John Gault en- 
tered upon his world. He found the foot 
of Market Street, progressed up it tow- 
ards the City Hall. It would have been 
interesting to observe him in this singular 
journey. 

A strange child, whom arc-lights as- 
tonish, whom pavements annoy, he moved 
from one to the other, testing their sub- 
stance, feeling it, almost tasting it. A 
yokel, a red and dripping hind, barefoot 
in the streets, he had never seen an elec- 
tric car, dreamed of a necktie or a wo- 
man’s hat. The clothing of the passersby 
embarrassed him, not because of his lack 
of it, but because of the nudity it con- 
cealed. The expanses of walls, the forest 
of poles, the crowds of men and women, 
the lighted canyon down which he 
walked, the vast multiplicity of the city, 
confused, harassed him. Later, in his life, 
his naiveté was to become even more ap- 
parent. 

He paused before the windows of a 
store. The immutable angels of his des- 

[elOt,) 





Demigods 


tiny, themselves appalled, must have 
laughed and wept, for John Gault, his 
face pressed against plateglass, stuff 
strange to his touch, stared gravely with- 
in the store at the tailor’s dummy, five 
feet high and dapper wax, and wondered 
what it might be. Still puzzled, he turned 
away. 

A corner fruit stand, brilliantly lighted, 
claimed him next. The paper wrappings 
upon the apples puzzled him. He drew 
them out, tried their tender skins with his 
fingers, filled his fists with fruit while the 
amazed owner stood by. Unnoticing, 
Gault passed on. 

A cheap jewelry store, its window let- 
tered with enamel, caused him to stop. 
Behind him a crowd gathered, respect- 
fully distant from the balk of timber 
which he carried. They gazed at him in 
wonder, amazed at his red skin, his pow- 
erful hands, his club. Boys of his own age 
hooted at his naked heels, running about 
him, tormenting him. 

To this he gave no heed. Unending sen- 

[avo2y) 





John Gault’s Journey 


sations, each raw, captivating, heady to 
his ignorance, possessed him. All sound 
and sight seemed to turn about him. His 
rapacious curiosity, his ravenous delight, 
remained unquenched. 

He fingered the enamelled lettering of 
the window, looked at the circle of bril- 
liants upon cheap plush within, lingered 
in a doorway as dark and shadowed as a 
cave, passed on to the next marvel. He 
sounded walls with his fists, tapped the 
iron of poles, stamped upon the blocks of 
the pavements, pausing many times to 
gape and stare. At some stage of his jour- 
ney he began to move to music, for a 
penny violinist, following the crowd at 
his heels, played derisive ragtime, keep- 
ing time with John Gault’s steps. The 
crowd, constantly growing in numbers, 
followed, expectant of some event. 

“T followed the lights of Philadelphia 
as one might follow the emblems of an 
enchantment,” he has said. “It all seemed 
incredibly beautiful to me. I had never 
dreamed of such buildings—such towers 

[ 103 | 





Demigods 


of stone. I was then in the purlieus to the 
rear of Fleet Street.” 

At the corner of Fleet Street John 
Gault turned south. From down the street 
came music, a march played upon a cal- 
liope. The chords were strong, vibrant, 
ringing in his ears. Naively pleased, he 
moved towards it. 

The calliope stood before an arcade, 
glittering with lights. Its interior was 
mirrored from floor to ceiling, and before 
these mirrors the crowd moved, milling 
about penny slot machines. A rough- 
voiced barker urged his patrons to view 
wonders and curiosities concealed behind 
a curtain at the arcade’s end. John Gault 
entered. 

In the room’s center a girl danced. She 
was young, delicately graceful. Her legs 
were bare, but her feet were slippered, 
and these slippers were heeled with gold. 
The floor was like glass, reflecting, with 
the perfection of a mirror, her move- 
ments, infinitely tantalizing and elusive, 
spaced and measured to the langour of 

[ 104 ] 





John Gault’s Journey 


her dance. Her heels, ruddy, shining, 
were like small hunted animals, circling 
in and out of a forest of silk, retreating, 
advancing, breaking from cover, convey- 
ing with small stampings their passion 
and their desire. 

The time of the music was—“Strut!— 
Strut!—Strut!” The girl postured to it, 
her heels clicking upon the floor. The 
music maddened Gault. A rune was form- 
ing itself in his mind—“I’m damned— 
damned—to look on this. Damned to look 
on this.” The beat of the golden heels 
sounded like drums in his ears. 

The music rose in volume. The girl 
swung close to Gault. As she passed he 
seized and passionately kissed her. The 
girl screamed and spat at him. The 
crowd, electrified, paused. 

“Look at him!” cried the girl. “Big as 
a horse, naked as a calf. Bring up hot 
iron an’ we'll shoe him!” 

The crowd, drawn from the street to 
the greater wonder within the arcade, 
swirled into the room. Breast to back, 

[ 105 ] 





Demigods 


body set to body, laughing, shouting, rib- 
aldly singing, they formed a sea that rip- 
pled about John Gault’s shoulders. At 
sight of him, they paused to gape, form- 
ing an eddy that moved about him as he 
walked. For the first time hands touched 
his body: feet trod upon his naked feet. 

Pushed, jostled, he grew dizzy, re- 
mained erect only by virtue of his 
strength. The crowd milled about him, 
shouting. A woman thrust an arm 
through his, dug an elbow into his ribs, 
made sheep’s eyes at him and sneered. 

“Give us a kiss for old times, country!” 
she cried. 

John Gault made swiftly off. The roar 
of the crowd lingered in his ears. His 
madness had gone, leaving as always the 
taste of it upon his lips. 

The street grew dark, became little 
more than a disorderly alley. For the first 
time, John Gault’s nostrils received the 
faint odor of the city, fetid, slightly mil- 
dewed. Troubled by it, he turned north. 

Single was the street upon which his 

[ 106 ] 





John Gault’s Journey 


course lay. He followed it to Peach, 
turned west at Sixteenth. His wonder 
growing, he stood beneath the great bulk 
of the City Hall, craned his neck towards 
the lights above. The streets that pierced 
the heart of the building were almost de- 
serted: the arches vague and shadowed. 
A. wagon rattled upon the pavement of 
the inner court. The sound seemed dis- 
tant, to John Gault, little more than a 
dream. The crowd that followed him had 
disappeared, but a policeman pounded 
his stick against the wall and cautioned 
him to move on. Wonderingly, John 
Gault obeyed. 

The hour was late. One by one the 
lights of Market Street winked and went 
out. He moved down a canyon of dark- 
ness, polished, yet dull. Distant feet 
moved upon the pavements, gave him no 
heed. He seemed to pass through a land 
dark as dream of lethe, dull, sombre, 
vague with sound and _ enchantment. 
Buildings, towers, the vast monuments of 


[ 107 ] 





Demigods 


the city, seemed shadows which he might 
brush away. 

Some instinct compelling, he returned 
to the docks. At his feet he perceived the 
line of river, white under moonlight. A 
fresh breeze blew from it, sweeping back 
the sound of the city, leaving him in 
peace upon the shore. 

He wet his face in the river current, 
bathed his tired limbs. For a mile or 
more, along the rim of a city the color of 
salt, black upon its horizons, he wan- 
dered with the river. His restless spirit, 
his tormenting energy was assuaged. It 
was nearly dawn when he rested. The first 
glow of orange was faint upon the hori- 
zon. He was lost in a region of gaunt 
frame buildings set near the docks. 

From a warehouse came a sound of 
scuffing, faint, but persistent. The sound 
was delusive, but John Gault searched it 
out. He climbed a narrow stairs, the 
wooden steps of which were worn and 
broken. The sound persisted, resembling 
the steps of a fantastic dance performed 

[ 108 ] 


John Gault’s Journey 


upon pattering feet. John Gault paused 
as he reached the room above. 

The walls were high. Four great win- 
dows pierced them. Through these 
streamed the faint, grey light of dawn, 
aqueous, submarine, giving the room the 
aspect of a land beneath the sea. The 
room itself was very long, cloaked in 
shadow which rendered vague a small 
platform at the floor’s end. 

Looking closely, John Gault perceived 
upon this platform the figure of a man 
seated in a chair. In this manner, for the 
first time, John Gault laid eyes upon 
Christopher Herrick. 

Their meeting should have been elec- 
tric, attended by warning, by premoni- 
tion, since it had been brought about by 
the configuration of the incredible des- 
tinies of each. 

Herrick was dressed in a night robe of 
white, from which his thin shanks pro- 
truded like pins. His face was shadowed, 
but his hooked nose was apparent, 

[ 109 ] 





Demigods 


pointed, eager as a bird’s. Above shone 
his indolent eyes. 

Gault perceived that he held in his 
hands a thin line, which, writhing 
strangely above the floor, stretched be- 
yond the angle of the stairs. 

At the cord’s end was a rat. The line 
was taut at the creature’s lips as it strug- 
gled to free itself. Its grey body was con- 
torted, galvanized. It squeaked as it was 
dragged forward, shrilled agonized and 
terrible protest. It was pulled to the base 
of the platform. 

Herrick, leaning down, seized it by 
the throat, and, unhooking the line from 
its lips, set it free. The creature scuttled 
from sight and disappeared. Squeaking 
came from behind the walls, faint, eerie, 
malevolent. 

The fisherman baited his hook with 
pork, tested the fabric of his line. Above 
the hook he fixed a bright, fresh feather. 
He cast the cord upon the floor, trolling 
it like a bass line. 

A rat darted swiftly out from the an- 

reErort 


John Gault’s Journey 


gle of the wall. For an instant, it sniffed 
at the bait, which Herrick dragged elu- 
sively before it, tested it with nose and 
eye. With a shark’s hunger it bit upon the 
pork, squealed as the hook caught its flesh, 
dragged at its lips with forepaws, totter- 
ing like a little man as it struggled to free 
itself. The process of trolling was re- 
peated. The rat was dragged to the plat- 
form, was set free. 

Herrick lifted his head, peered into the 
semi-darkness. Some consciousness warn- 
ing him, he felt John Gault’s presence. 

“Who's therer” he called. 

John Gault moved out of the shadow 
of the stairs. 

Amazement upon his face, Herrick 
came forward. His slender fingers, with- 
out ceremony, searched out John Gault’s 
body, probed his muscles, prized them- 
selves into his flesh. 

“Body of Goliath!” he exclaimed. 
“Red as iron! What forge moulded you!” 

Gault stumbled with fatigue. 

“Sit down!” cried Herrick, drawing 


[SIT 1] 


Demigods 


him towards the chair. “Red earth itself 
must be growing tired! What land made 
your How did you come here?” 

Sitting in the chair, John Gault told 
the story of his life. He told of Hosea 
Gault and his titanic wanderings as he 
knew of them, of Boontown and the Dun- 
kard colony, of the ranges of the moun- 
tains that rimmed the horizon of that 
land. He told of his mother, of Gil Mer- 
ton, of Duncan, the miller, and of the 
episode of the mill. With open heart, he 
laid bare the secret of his journey up the 
mountain, of his ecstasy in the land that 
there lay at his feet. He told of the death 
and of the stark burial of Gil Merton, of 
his own flight from the Dunkards. “T ex- 
pected them to put hounds on my track,” 
he said. “I would have killed Duncan if I 
had been left alone. I could not stay with 
the Dunkards! I shall seek my own land 
in my own fashion.” 

Continuing, he told of his journey to 
Portland, of his there hiding away upon 
the steamer which had brought him to 

[112] 





John Gault’s Journey 





the Delaware, of the episodes upon the 
streets of Philadelphia, of his wonder and 
amazement at sight of such a city. 

Throughout the recital, Herrick lis- 
tened, rapt and intent. He made no move- 
ment, gave no visible sign, but some qual- 
ity of speech moved behind his indolent 
eyes. When John Gault ceased he sat mo- 
tionless, silent, as if still listening. A mo- 
ment of quietness intervened. Herrick 
spoke at last. 

= bellyme, he, said. '‘Is*thewland} that 
you seek in the hearts of mene” 

John Gault made no reply. “How 
could I answer?” he has said. “The idea 
was absurd, grandiloquent, yet I felt it to 
be true.”’ 

Herrick rose, and, going to a window, 
looked out upon the city now light with 
dawn. Shortly, he returned to John Gault. 

“Your land is not here,” he said. “It is 
beyond the horizon of a dream, but you 
may win to it before you are consumed at 
your certain end. Stay for a time with 
me. I shall help or destroy you if I can.” 

[113 ] 


Demigods 


John Gault grew to love Herrick as he 
never loved any other man. Absurd, fan- 
tastic, fanatical, Herrick was bound al- 
ready upon the rack of his ruin. Instead 
of his helping Gault, John Gault sup- 
ported him, kept him in food. This, 
doubtless, was intended by Herrick when 
he took Gault in. At the age of fourteen 
John Gault plucked food from the streets 
that Herrick might eat. 

Christopher Herrick must be plain 
upon this page. To him John Gault owes 
much, owes little, owes all. In the cosmic 
plan of John Gault’s life, Christopher 
Herrick was a requisite. He made plain 
to Gault much of the business and pain 
of living, taught him to read. He in- 
structed Gault by epigrams, and, as an 
incident to them, taught him to write. 
He talked to Gault of Europe, of Vienna 
wherein he had taken a course in surgery 
and a degree, but did not even differen- 
tiate city from nation. He talked of gems 
and of their settings, and Gault at the age 
of fifteen could speak glibly of chryso- 

[ 114 ] 





——— ee 


John Gault’s Journey 


berl and chrysoprase and name the possi- 
ble colors of diamonds. Herrick, how- 
ever, long before, had pawned or sold the 
last of his precious stones. In his years 
with Herrick, John Gault attained an 
education, desultory, vast, entrancing to 
his imagination, yet containing astound- 
ing omissions. 

In appearance Herrick was a small, 
pale man. He walked with a limp, a little 
drag of his left leg. Throughout the 
months that he knew him, John Gault 
never ascertained any reason for this. 
Herrick limped because of some convolu- 
tion of his mind, not because of any phys- 
ical injury. 

His feet and hands were very small, 
his fingers, in proportion, long and slen- 
der. He had a curious affectation in re- 
gard to his hands. They possessed a use 
for him that a butterfly might have in its 
wings and feelers. He brushed all objects 
with his hands, gaining from this touch 
knowledge and satisfaction. 

His most conspicuous features were his 

eed 





Demigods 


eyes. They were clear, of a color that re- 
sembled the depths of the sea, and pos- 
sessed a light like that of water under 
glass. In looking at a person he had a 
habit of craning his neck a little upon one 
side, and this gave his glance a casual- 
ness that belied its swiftness and surety. 
His nose was thin, acquiline, very large, 
the fantastic nose of a veritable Punch- 
inello. The lips beneath were very thin 
and delicate. 

His face possessed a fragility, so acute, 
so sensitive, as to cause his features to re- 
semble a woman’s, save for his nose. This 
stuck out like a bridge of iron, irreduci- 
ble, fantastic, humorous. 

By birth he was a gentleman, the de- 
scendant of an ancient Philadelphia fam- 
ily, by name Deroulet. Christopher De- 
roulet, in a gesture of dismissal of that 
which lay behind him, had changed his 
name to Herrick. Reduced to penury, 
without means of support, he lived as he 
pleased in the top of the warehouse fac- 
ing upon the river. 

err Gi 





John Gault’s Journey 


In a measure he was an allegory, pre- 
senting the figure of the ultimate realist, 
set upon the final strip of land. None 
might gainsay him, none trespass upon 
him, since he asked for nothing, posses- 
sed nothing. In this he was content. 

He leavened his existence with hu- 
mor and an insatiable curiosity. He spent 
hours upon the streets, inspecting his fel- 
low men. He would return at dawn, worn 
out, exhausted, but content. For days, 
thereafter, he might never leave his 
room, but would lie upon his bed, mak- 
ing up fantastic stories of that which he 
had seen or witnessed. At such times, 
John Gault waited upon him, served 
him, found him a hard master. 

He would have made the greatest of 
diarists, but for the fact that he, who 
never lacked nervous energy, did not pos- 
sess the stamina necessary to put pen to 
paper. He was subject always to an ex- 
citation, a sheer pleasure in the business 
of human life, that confused him, caused 


[117] 





Demigods 


him to think endlessly but to do nothing 
else. 

“Life is the only business. Life is the 
only pleasure,” he would say, grandilo- 
quently. 

Given back the fortune which he had 
dissipated, the friends which he had lost, 
he would have alienated them both again, 
because of the diffusion of energy which 
rendered him incapable of concentrated 
attention. Those friends that remained to 
him, sought him out, never expecting him 
to seek them. They were content with the 
energy of his mind, his wit, his subtle and 
dextrous truth. They came to him as one 
might to a spring, whose current flows 
endlessly from its source and which takes 
nothing for itself. 

An inveterate reader, sprinkling vol- 
umes like dust upon the floor of his room, 
he longed and expected always to write a 
book, postponing the beginning of it per- 
petually from day to day. In this he 
found justification for his idleness, his in- 

[ 118 | 





John Gault’s Journey 


sufficiency. It was a gloss and polish with 
which he made his existence bearable. 

He once said to John Gault: 

“Take all of yourself, your strength 
and weakness, wit and imbecility, your 
cleverness and passion, your coolness and 
ironic humour, your great courage and 
abject cowardice, and, afflicted with the 
vertigo of existence, set them down upon 
paper strong enough for the task. Write 
in many colors—as your eyes will permit 
you—and when you have finished, weep 
at your incompleted task. You will have 
written the book of mankind!” 

He might add with ironic humour, 
laughing at himself: 

“TY shall surely begin tomorrow!” 

No other phrases could have expressed 
Herrick himself so well. Hence they are 
written here. He was a realist, bound and 
pinioned upon the rack of reality, un- 
saved by his humour and incurring the 
additional damnation of bitter knowl- 
edge. 

To John Gault in the days that fol- 

[119 ] 





Demigods 


lowed, he contributed much, an ordered 
philosophy of life, knowledge of men and 
women, the wisdom of many books, man- 
ners, breeding, the thin shreds of culture 
which in time draped John Gault’s titan- 
ic nakedness. 

It would- have been interesting to ob- 
serve the two together. Herrick, shiver- 
ing in bed, the tattered quilt pulled up 
about his ears, his Punchinello nose pro- 
jecting like a beak over the knitted edge 
of the quilt, talked endlessly. John Gault, 
seated upon a stool beside the bed, his red 
body bent to avoid the cold, Herrick’s 
coat about his shoulders, held the dish 
upon which was a sparse breakfast. The 
October sunlight stabbed through the 
dust of the room, illuminating the rough 
boards of the floor, the broken furniture, 
shining upon the lines of Herrick’s fig- 
ure, slight beneath the quilt. 

Herrick talked ceaselessly. His thin 
hands brushed the quilt, darted this way 
and that, errant as butterflies. His ges- 
tures were almost effeminate. 

12077 


John Gault’s Journey 


He had been at a prize fight the previ- 
ous evening, he said, where he had staked 
and lost much of the little money that re- 
mained to him, none the less he had 
reached a solution of a problem which 
had troubled him for so long a time as he 
was able to remember, namely the prob- 
lem of that force which caused the hu- 
man race to progress towards a destiny 
which was undoubtedly higher than its 
origin. He had concluded during the 
course of the fight that it was neither the 
good intentions of mankind nor their ape- 
artificer cleverness that caused them to 
progress, but their courage and enormous 
fecundity and energy. 

The winner of the battle, a dour little 
man, so stupid that he scarcely knew 
whom he was fighting, had suffered griev- 
ously from the beginning of the bout, 
had been twice upon the verge of being 
counted out, but each time had returned 
to the attack with a courage that was 
equalled only by his stupidity. Reeling 
with fatigue, he had rained his fists upon 

Lora 





Demigods 


his opponent until that less vital man had 
been beaten to his knees. 

“His blows seem to spring from some 
source of everlasting fertility,” said Her- 
tick. “Those blows are like the countless 
men. and women that are born into the 
world. Any obstacle, omnipotent, irresist- 
ible, must bow before such pressure. 
Thus mankind progresses!” 

John Gault’s then simplicity neither 
accepted nor rejected such dogma. He 
listened patiently, amused and interested, 
recognizing the fantastic quality that was 
Herrick’s. At times, he intervened to save 
the older man from folly that might have 
destroyed him. An episode presents itself. 

Herrick possessed directness in dis- 
claiming that which he disliked. He paid 
no one the compliment of unwilling at- 
tention. Upon the occasion of his birth- 
day, he had taken John Gault to the the- 
ater, a small vaudeville house situated 
somewhere in the region beyond Vine 
Street. The two had occupied a box, for 

at225) 





John Gault’s Journey 


which Herrick had expended a dollar of 
his depleted funds. 

Herrick sat in the front of the box, his 
thin hands playing upon the plush of the 
railing, his eager eyes searching audience 
and stage. His interest was, as always, 
keenly alive, undeviating. 

John Gault was seated immediately be- 
hind Herrick. He had never dreamed of 
such a spectacle as this. He was amazed 
when the orchestra issued into the pit, 
startled by the first rise of the curtain, 
blinded by the row of lights. The dark- 
ened house in which he sat seemed a 
dome of silence into which his spirit 
ebbed, leaving his flesh bound and trem- 
bling with delight. 

The performance was a poor one. 
Jugglers succeeded acrobats, gave way in 
turn to a group of dogs which made 
clumsy letters upon the floor. Through- 
out all of this Herrick’s interest remained 
unchanged. He laughed like a boy at each 
one of the trivial jokes, seeming to de- 
light in the naiveté of the performance. 

[ 123 ] 





Demigods 


A page, emerging from the wings at 
the close of each act, changed a lettered 
card indicating that one performance was 
at an end, that a new one was to com- 
mence. The letter MZ brought the change 
in Herrick’s attitude. 

The act -that followed was grossly 
coarse, without humour or grace to re- 
lieve it. Herrick’s paganism, delighted 
with any delicacy of imagination, was 
offended. Without warning, he leaned 
from the front of the box and said in a 
low, clear voice: 

“Ring your curtain down!” 

The audience did not hear him. The 
performers, however, stood with a qual- 
ity of arrested motion, save one, the prin- 
cipal, who continued with his lines. With- 
out pause Herrick spoke again. 

“Ring your curtain down!” he re- 
peated. 

An emperor or a child might have 
spoken in a similar manner. He seemed 
to expect unwavering obedience. 

His speech was heeded by the audi- 

[ 124 ] 


John Gault’s Journey 


ence, by the principal upon the stage. 
The performance stopped. 

The next sound that John Gault heard 
was the rip of wood as a sailor tore his 
chair from the floor of the gallery. The 
chair was hurled at Herrick, missing him 
and crashing into the pit. Its fall was like 
the flash of a spark igniting tinder. The 
audience got to its feet, began to move 
towards the box. John Gault perceived 
the ring of raised fists directed towards 
Herrick, heard the shouts of the crowd 
rising in fury. 

Herrick stood at the edge of the box. 
He looked at the mob that was sweeping 
towards him as one might gaze upon a 
rising river. John Gault was not able ex- 
actly to distinguish Herrick’s mind. His 
face was towards the crowd, but his body 
was turned partially from it as if he were 
prepared to flee from the fury he had 
evoked. He was smiling slightly, but with 
his lips alone, and with this grimace he 
seemed to deprecate his own fear and 
weakness. His lips were moving, but the 

[125 ] 





Demigods 


sounds that he uttered were drowned in 
the roar of the crowd. John Gault, going 
close to him, was able to hear what he 
said. 

“Good people,” he was repeating again 
and again, “I have spoiled your perform- 
ance. You must not spoil mine.” 

The first of the mob reached the box. 
A man thrust his leg over the edge, pre- 
paring to mount into it. Him, John Gault 
flung back. Herrick still remained mo- 
tionless at the front of the box. John 
Gault seized him, pushed him roughly 
backwards, fled with him towards a small 
door at the end of the aisle behind the 
box. Herrick was still speaking in the 
same gentle tone. He seemed bemused by 
what he had done, to talk as if in a dream. 

“Good people!” he kept repeating, “I 
have spoiled your performance. You 
must not spoil mine!” 

The door led to the wings of the stage. 
John Gault, in his swift transit, caught a 
glimpse of the amazed faces of the per- 
formers, saw the heavy curtain shuttle 

[E2Or) 





John Gault’s Journey 


down. The roar of the mob was shut off. 
John Gault and Herrick passed into the 
street. 

The air was very cold. A cold mist was 
seeping in from the river, cloaking house 
and pole, giving the few arclights an au- 
reole of grey. 

Herrick still seemed suffering from 
some amazing incapacity. He ran, rather 
than walked, so swiftly that John Gault 
was hard put to it to keep pace with him, 
He said no word, but, subject to a name- 
less agony, wrung his hands. 

The two reached the sanctuary of the 
warehouse. The steps, leading to the loft, 
were dark, intolerably somber, but up 
them Herrick ran as if the ghosts of 
wasted years ran upon his heels. 

At the head of the stairs was an oil lan- 
tern, bracketted upon the wall. The yel- 
low rays shone through the darkness of 
the room. 

Suddenly, Herrick burned with an 
amazing and intolerable fury. His move- 
ments were galvanic, staccato. To John 

[127 ] 





Demigods 


Gault, who watched him, he was a man 
transformed. 

Destruction seemed to animate him, in- 
creasing his strength many fold. He 
seized his books, tore their pages apart, 
stamped upon the shreds. The objects of 
furniture he toppled from their bases. 
Thereafter, compelled by some aimless 
madness, he pulled them to the center of 
the room, creating a great pile upon the 
floor like an industrious and tugging ant. 
His face grew grey, became beaded with 
sweat. As he labored, words, incoheren- 
cies, unintelligible to John Gault, issued 
from his lips. 

“T have destroyed my substance and my 
flesh,” he cried. “And with propriety, I 
shall myself be destroyed.” 

Suddenly the fury which sustained him 
ceased. He fell upon the bed, lay pros- 
trate there, sobbing. 

“T am nothing,” he said. “My life has 
been nothing, a shadow of substance 
which shall cease shortly to be even that. 

[ 128 ] 





John Gauit’s Journey 


eer 


Nothing remains to me but the sure cog- 
nizance of darkness.” 

Thereafter, he was silent. 

John Gault got water and bathed the 
older man’s face and body. Herrick’s 
flesh seemed fevered. He lay quite still, 
his eyes half-opened. He was apparently 
unaware that John Gault was in the 
room. 

The night passed slowly. Herrick said 
no word, but seemed occasionally to sleep. 
John Gault sat beside the bed and shiv- 
ered with the cold. 

It was dawn when Herrick spoke 
again. He was, he said, at the end of his 
resources, without further money or en- 
ergy to sustain either John Gault or him- 
self. For his own privations he did not 
Care, since he was long accustomed to 
them, but John Gault should look to him- 
self. 

Gault dragged the bed and the recum- 
bent figure upon it to a point from which 
Herrick might look out into the street. 
Thereafter, he went out along the river. 

[ 129 | 








Demigods 


The days that followed, John Gault 
has spoken of bitterly. “In my innocence,” 
he exclaimed, “seeking for help, I be- 
lieved that I might find it. I begged from 
door to door for food. In the meantime, 
Herrick and myself starved.” 

There were elements in himself which 
he had not considered. At this time, as 
throughout his life, he seemed incapable 
of evoking charity. He was fifteen years 
of age, full-blooded, strong. None seeing 
him would have believed his dire neces- 
sity. Upon the fourth day, he was ar- 
rested for stealing meat from a public 
market and was haled into court. Due to 
some technical failure of proof, he was 
released. He had never before dreamed 
of any law save that of the Dunkards. 
The metallic processes of the court fright- 
ened him. “I felt myself subjected to a 
machine,” Gault has said. 

The following morning John Gault 
got work as a raw boy at one of the 
smaller Bedloe shipyards, that one in 
particular which lies upon the Delaware 

[ 130 ] 


John Gault’s Journey 


at the foot of Fourth Street. For his la- 
bors there he received at first the just 
stipend of nine dollars a week. Later, due 
to his increasing physical strength, his 
growing dexterity, his wage was raised. 
Throughout this time Herrick’s condition 
grew steadily worse. He seemed to exist 
only within the confines of his own spirit. 


Bedloe’s Little Yard is at the rear of 
the larger and is bounded upon its south 
side by a small stream so quiet, so turbid, 
so blackly discolored, that it resembles 
the river of ultimate night. Three ways 
lie upon this stream for the building of 
sailing vessels. A great shears, for the 
masting of the ships, stands between them. 
Nearby is a crane, brown, rusted, shaky, 
high grass growing out of the blue mud 
that flanks its base. 

The yard gate is just below the ways, 
giving upon the cobbled street. Carved 
stone dolphins, enigmatic crescents upon 
their foreheads, flank the entrance road. 

Between these dolphins, day after day, 

[131 ] 





Demigods 


John Gault passed on his way to work. 
The nature of the labor pleased him. He 
found delight in the touch of raw steel, 
in the iron strength of hull and spar. 

Bedloe’s at that time were at work 
upon three vessels, four-masted sailing 
ships, steel from stem to stern. When 
John Gault knew them they were already 
ships in contour and in line. Their bodies 
were red, for the raw iron was as yet un- 
painted. They were sheafed in glistening 
metal as a woman’s body might be 
sheafed in crimson silk, scarlet against 
the sun. The veil of the water, which they 
must pierce at launching, lay just be- 
yond. 

At work upon these three ships was a 
crew of some sixty men. They were di- 
vided into two gangs, a foreman for each. 
Acie Carrol was foreman of the gang to 
which Gault belonged. 

He was a young man of uncertain age. 
He himself did not know the date of his 
birth, nor the names of his father and 
mother. So long as he was able to remem- 

[ 132 ] 





John Gault’s Journey 


ber he had borne the surname of Carrol. 
Acie was an abbreviation of 4ce-In-The- 
Hole. This soubriquet he had won for 
himself by his ingenuity and daring. 

He was very tall, very thin, seemingly 
formed of a trellis of bone which jutted 
from his skin. His complexion was pal- 
lid, almost yellow in color. His head was 
large, entirely bald, identical in color 
with his skin. His features were regular, 
well-shaped and cut. In the yard his cos- 
tume was always the same, a blue shirt 
fastened by a heavy leather belt above his 
overalls. 

His pleasure was in building. To the 
creation of steel in the shape of a ship he 
brought an ecstasy that was both mystic 
and passional. He felt himself to be the 
builder of cathedrals that cut water. 
With smut, sweat, and terrible cursing, 
he created vessels of sacrament that tri- 
nuned land, sea, and sky, in a joindure 
beyond human contemplation. No priest 
in chantry could have been more devout 
in his purpose than he. 

PIs 





Demigods 


Incurably foul of tongue, even his rev- 
erence for ships, his ecstasy in their pres- — 
ence, could not change his habits of 
speech. He was like a medieval architect 
who builds a cathedral door so large that 
a god might enter through it, and then 
plasters smut above the lintel. 

“That old Bich!” he said, contemplat- 
ing a ship which he had wrought. “We'll 
stick a spike down her bung when we lift 
her off the ways. That'll make ’er smell 
herself. Give her a beliyfull!” 

He spoke of steel as a musician might 
speak of his instrument. 

‘You \can: \feel:isteel,’ he wouldvsay, 
“Make it listen. Make it play to you. God 
made the world of steel in seven days, but 
I wasn’t foreman of that job. He sunk it 
even under the rivers—” then, bitterly— 
“Golan get tl? 

He possessed a phobia, incredibly 
strange. He hated water, the river itself, 
and the sea beyond it. He could not be in- 
duced to go on board a ship unless it were 
one of his own, lying at the shears to be 

[ 134 ] 


John Gault’s Journey 


fitted. Once he had fallen from the deck 
of a vessel and had nearly drowned. He 
had been dragged out fainting, subject to 
a seizure that resembled epilepsy. His 
eyes were contracted with terror, not at 
the death which he had escaped, but in 
contemplation of the stifling element into 
which he had fallen. 

Very brave, utterly heedless of himself 
where his ships were concerned, he was 
intensely superstitious none the less. He 
consulted auguries, blades of grass upon 
the river bank, before a launching, read 
signs in the stars, felt fear if the yard cat 
crossed his path. He discharged one 
workman, a Finn, because he believed 
him to be a warlock. 

Half-laughing, half in fear, he apolo- 
gized to his crew for this. The Finn had 
dropped a tye-piece as it was ready to 
be rivetted to the hull, and Carrol had 
made this accident his excuse. 

ehinns are\ queer!) ‘he “said: \o@ant 
know about a Finn. That one had a bad 
eye and his eyebrows met. I’m glad I let 

tea ss 





Demigods 


him go. Damn him! He would have liked 
to scratch our luck with his black claws.” 

Between John Gault and Carrol there 
grew up a liking that ripened quickly 
into friendship. Carrol called Gault 
“The Red Boy,” not troubling at first to 
learn his name, gave him the hardest 
tasks to do, honestly believed that he 
brought fortune to the work. He fell into 
the habit of walking home from the plant 
with Gault in the evenings, met Herrick 
and was astonished at him. 

Herrick at that time was fast approach- 
ing his later end, realized this, but in Car- 
rol he found vicarious amusement, sub- 
stituting the young man’s vigor and joy 
in life for his own fast failing strength. 
In the picture of Carrol’s fulfilment of 
himself, the foreman’s ardour in the 
building of ships, Herrick found sur- 
cease in his own pain of unaccomplish- 
ment. 

Herrick swore that he would be pres- 
ent at the launching of the first of the 
sailing ships. He exacted from Carrol 

[ 136 ] 





John Gault’s Journey 


and John Gault precise descriptions of 
the three vessels, their length, breadth, 
the shape of their hulls, their positions as 
they lay upon the ways. By invincible 
habit of mind, fixed for so many years, he 
could conceive of them only as personal- 
ities, and, vaguely, was troubled because, 
as yet, they were unnamed. 

He begged Carrol for a description of 
a launching, and Carrol told of his first, 
at Singer Island, where as a raw hand he 
had watched one of the launching crew, 
who had discovered a loose pivot block 
far down the line of the ways, as the ship 
began to take water, hold the block in 
place with his hands, to be dragged, 
crushed, into the river. 

Herrick averted his face at this. His 
thin body quivered beneath the ragged 
quilt that covered him. 

‘That was a blood sacrifice,” he said. 
“A man immolated in his work. That 
workman thought much of his life.” 

He waved his hand with the same but- 
terfly gesture that he always affected, and 

base) 





Demigods 


sank back upon the bed. Carrol left, and 
when he had gone, Herrick asked John 
Gault to bring him a book in order that 
he might read. 

The book which he chose was a trans- 
lation of Ronald’s ‘‘La Chienne du Ciel,” 
a story of the moon, light, shimmering, 
delicately colorful, a direct contradiction 
to his earlier, blacker mood. John Gault 
read aloud from it until Herrick slept. 


Throughout this time, the period of 
Herrick’s sickness, one begins to perceive 
John Gault’s gifts, appetites which he im- 
mensely satisfies. One sees the curiosity 
which devours him, is aware of his sub- 
tlety and madness. But beyond these one 
catches sight of the destiny of which he 
feels himself to be a part. Concerning it, 
he confesses himself to Herrick without 
shame at his own arrogance. ‘The confes- 
sion is naive and unrivalled. 

“Tf I ‘shall be destroyed, whe isaidyat 
shall be by action indomitably my own.” 

His work in the shipyard engrossed 

[ 138 ] 


John Gault’s Journey 


him. He talked of it, and particularly of 
his labor upon the furthest hull which 
was almost ready for launching. 

“T was stationed about the middle of 
the ship, where the red metal curves into 
the giant waist above. With a sledge ham- 
mer in my hands I struck blow after blow 
against the side of the ship. Steel an- 
swered steel in ringing vibration through 
the hull. Again and again I struck, taking 
pleasure in the beat of iron on iron... 
I could not bear to stop and continued 
after my work was done.” 

The gesture, mimetic, vast, was typical 
of Gault. He must have felt like a titan, 
knocking for admission at the gate of the 
future. 

Otherwise, the gestures were false. 
There was no need to pound upon the 
steel of the hulls with a sledge hammer. 
Gault, his fancy seized by the picture that 
he would thus present, had chosen to do 
so of his own volition. 

He spoke of the hulls. 

“They hang on air. The red steel of 

reo 





Demigods 


their plates is stuff plain to my touch. I 
delight in its metal and hardness.” 

Herrick grew worse as the days passed. 
The older man was constantly in John 
Gault’s thoughts, filled his mind. Day by 
day, he reports his condition to Carrol. 

“Ferrick was very bad again last night. 
His hands were as cold as ice and he 
seemed slipping from the bed. His body 
seemed to form a hollow beneath the 
blankets. His mind was very active. He 
asked that I cover the bed with books, de- 
claring that he would sleep more soundly 
surrounded by the substance of other 
men’s lives. Throughout the night he 
read, but at dawn he was better, and push- 
ing the books from him, he turned upon 
his side and slept... .” 


Released from work at the shipyard at 
six o’clock, John Gault and Carrol would 
usually return to the warehouse and talk 
for a time to Herrick. Thereafter, the two 
would go to Carrol’s home, where Car- 
tol would eat his supper. 

[ 140 ] 





John Gault’s Journey 


Throughout his life, John Gault was to 
regard Carrol’s wife, whom he met upon 
the first of these visits, with amazement. 
She was a drab wisp of a woman, whose 
skin seemed grey in color. Many years 
younger than Carrol, himself very young, 
she seemed actually older. 

For Carrol she had a wondering ador- 
ation that was far from being meek. She 
prickled like a small terrier when he 
touched her, simulating an anger that she 
was far from feeling. She dealt him blows 
upon his ears and face if his itching and 
inquisitive fingers as much as lifted a lid 
from one of the pots upon her stove. She 
spoke to him rarely, but even when silent, 
her eyes were mutely directed towards 
him. Carrol’s coarseness, his wild virility, 
fascinated her. She was without pride so 
far as their relations to one another were 
concerned. She would have done any- 
thing without stint or limit that would 
have been of aid to him. 

Curiously, of the two, she seemed the 
dominant person, and Carrol always 

[ 141 ] 


Demigods 


smothered beneath her almost maternal 
ardour, which she strove to hide. In his 
blasphemies, his uncouthness, his super- 
stition, his skill as a builder of ships, she 
took a pride which she was careful never 
to manifest, and after each of his blasting 
impieties John Gault looked to see her 
wipe Carrol’s lips clean. 

Carrol regarded her as a child might 
regard a creature beyond the furthest 
reach of its knowledge. He laughed bois- 
terously at her occasional clumsiness, 
smacked her lightly with closed fist or 
open palm as she pleased him, ate enor- 
mously, and without words, of the food 
that she set before him, and, wiping his 
mouth upon his coat sleeve, re-fuelled 
and gay, went out upon his nightly 
rounds. 

The visits that he made were of sur- 
passing interest to John Gault. Together 
the two roamed through the wilderness of 
Philadelphia, devoured and conquered 
it. They entered dive and hall, fought and 
caroused nightly along the water front, 

[ 142 ] 


John Gault’s Journey 


but at any time before dawn Carrol might 
give his terrible falsetto laugh, and, lift- 
ing his thin voice, call out: 

“Tron, John Gault! Iron!” 

Thereupon, the two would leave what- 
ever company detained them, and would 
take their way to Currier Park on its 
height above the south side of the city. 
Here, a reservoir shone dimly white with 
the mist upon its surface, and at its edge, 
dividing land and water, stood a fence of 
wrought iron, a palisade of darkness. Its 
substance was cleanly lined. Its pendants 
were like black and dripping ivory. The 
whole structure in strength and delicacy 
was a miracle of the iron-worker’s art. 

John Gault would stand below the em- 
bankment, while Carrol, with fumbling, 
drunken fingers, would caress pendant 
and scroll, muttering softly to himself. 

“God damn my soul, John!” he would 
cry ecstatically. “These palings were 
wrought in hell and not on earth. This 
iron is flesh.” 

Afterwards, he would topple down the 

[ 143 ] 





Demigods 


embankment into John Gault’s arms, and 
the two, laughing mightily, would go 
home through streets light with dawn. 


Not a week of Carrol’s life went by 
without his consulting his fortune teller. 
He went to her as a sick man might go to 
his doctor or a religious man to his priest. 
Unless he did so, his wire-edged nerves 
were shaken; he was distrait and ill at 
ease. 

The name of this woman was Carrie 
Warren. She lived in a single room in a 
tenement that was set at the foot of the 
purlieu of Mill-End road, almost upon 
the docks. 

She was a fair-skinned woman, Nordic 
in blood, clear-eyed and very fat. Despite 
her appearance John Gault found her to 
be impressive. She had reduced her call- 
ing to a paucity of gesture, a dearth of 
words, that expressed her lean thought. 
She made no movement that was not es- 
sential, took no breath that was not nec- 
essary for her continued existence. Back 

[ 144 | 





John Gault’s Journey 


of this inanition, as in a still and frozen 
void, moved her spirit, which seemed life- 
less. 

Behind her a window gave a clear cold 
light. The room was bare, except for a 
table before which she sat. Her sole gar- 
ment (she would not trouble to wear any 
other) was a kimona, humped by a thong 
about her waist. A little to one side, upon 
a line and ring let down from the ceiling, 
swung a parrot, the gift of some sailor 
friend, the one spot of color in the room’s 
bareness, and this creature, not taught to 
speak, from time to time screeched forth 
sound which was not unlike the creaking 
of a wagon wheel. 

The woman herself, in the midst of her 
reading of the lines of fate, might pause 
to yawn, talked always in the most or- 
dinary conversational tone of voice, gave 
utterance to the vapidity of her mind, but 
back of this, from out of the void that en- 
compassed her, moved a quality of des- 
tiny that impressed by its sheer indiffer- 
ence. | 

[145 ] 


Demigods 


“Your hand, dearie,” she would say to 
Carrol. ‘Lay it on the table there.” 

Never troubling to look at it, she would 
go on. ‘““The same luck, always the same. 
I’dfeel it, ‘nwvere ‘it toichange) 4.87 

Her heavy lids would seem to move up 
over her clear eyes. The screeching of the 
parrot would cloud over and drown her 
voice. A single tone remained, and this 
seemed like l’envoz of her prophecy. 

“Td feel it, ’twere it to change.” 

John Gault, looking back as he and 
Carrol would leave the room, would see 
the parrot swinging above her head and 
below the screeching bird the motionless 
bulk of her figure. 

But once she looked at John Gault’s 
palm. ‘A horse which you may ride,” she 
said indifferently and pushed the hand 
from her. 

That night, John Gault, impelled by 
some impulse which had root in the wo- 
man’s words, gambled in a saloon upon 
the water front, in his exuberance hurl- 
ing the dice from one end of the bar to 

[ 146 ] 


FO ne ee ne RS RE SS A RL A NTN AE 
John Gault’s Journey 


the other. Carrol stood behind him laugh- 
ing. In an hour he had won twelve hun- 
dred dollars, had bought the house clear 
of liquor, and with a tumult of people at 
his heels, laughing in sheer joy at his own 
strength, had smashed with his red fists 
whatever had stood before him, wood, or 
steel, or flesh, and at dawn, still roaring, 
had gone out like a gutted candle. 

Years later, he recorded this incident 
in his journal, attaching to it a greater im- 
portance than perhaps was deserved. He 
notes contriteness that in his good fortune 
he should have forgotten Herrick. 

“The dice were alive in my hands,” he 
writes. “A devil kicked through each one. 
I could see their black heels stamp upon 
the dice as the numbers rolled. It was like 
liberating some blasphemous force... 
I felt myself made, my purposes consum- 
mated, all power, all glory within my 
hands.” 

The date of the event recorded above 
was August, 1889. Shortly, thereafter, the 
first of the hulls in Bedloe’s Little Yard 

[147 ] 





Demigods 


took water. This ship upon its launching 
was christened—‘‘Mayflower.” 

The day of the launching was very hot, 
drenched with humidity, but overcast. 
Above the monotone of the lower sky 
boiled a torrent of white cloud, edged 
with darkness, which mounted until it 
seemed to reach the very rim of heaven. 
No breath of air as yet was felt upon the 
earth. The bunting at the ship’s bow and 
stern hung motionless, as if cast in iron. 

The time of the launching was set for 
middle afternoon. The tide was high at 
three. Four brought slack water and the 
first turn of the ebb. 

Spectators gathered early. The officials 
of the company, the two working gangs, 
were within the ropes that hedged the 
nascent ship. Outside the hemp, in num- 
bers that increased up to the moment of 
launching, were workmen from the yard, 
idlers who had wandered from the street. 

John Gault and Carrol carried Her- 
rick, upon a chair made of their locked 
arms, between the twin dolphins that 

[ 148 ] 





John Gault’s Journey 


flanked the gates of the yard. Herrick, for 
the first time, seemed querulous concern- 
ing his failing strength. 

John Gault found him a place beside 
the middle hull. Here, seated, a blanket 
trussed about his trembling knees, the red 
metal of the hull behind him, he seemed 
to be a creature of tiny size. 

From the dark sky, boiling with cloud, 
came the first faint brush of air, precursor 
of the gathering storm, which caused the 
pennants that decked the ship to quiver 
slightly, then fall to stillness again. Land, 
water, sky seemed hushed, brooding. 
Through this silence sounded the first 
blows of the sledges as the standing blocks 
were knocked out from beneath the hull. 

There followed a period, timed by the 
beat of hammers, which all members of 
the launching party endured with pain— 
the pain attendant upon the birth of a le- 
viathan. The beat of the hammers in- 
creased in rapidity, sounding call 
through the length and depth of the hull, 
pricking it to life. The ship quivered be- 

[149 ] 





Demigods 


neath the impulse, struggled against it, 
seemingly strove to sink back into slum- 
ber again. 

John Gault, a great two-handled saw 
in his hands, waiting with a fellow work- 
man to cut the tye-piece beneath the bow 
that bound*the ship like a cord to land, 
felt wild exultation. Above him, upon the 
bow, appeared Carrol. His lean face 
streamed with sweat. His body seemed 
animated with galvanic action. 

“Cut!” he called out. “Cut now!” 

John Gault, exulting in drama, bent his 
back to the task. The teeth of the saw bit 
upon the pine of the tye-piece. A soft 
mold of wood, aromatic, faintly steam- 
ing, curved up from beneath the steel. 
The blade itself took sound, groaned, 
whimpered, as weight bore upon it. The 
beat of the hammers continued, growing 
staccato, more imperative. The saw re- 
sponded, quickening its course. Between 
these implements there seemed to be a 
race timed to the meeting of an incredible 
destiny. The ship quivered, took breath 

[150 ] 





John Gault’s Journey 


as might a young child, prepared for the 
headlong plunge that awaited it. 

The yellow dust of the pine curved up, 
ceased. The beat of the hammers was sud- 
denly stilled. For an instant the ship hung 
palpitant, as though bound in an agony of 
suspense. 

John Gault heard his name called. 
Looking up, he beheld Carrol upon the 
pinnacle of the bow. Carrol’s face was 
grey, contorted. 

“John Gault!” he was crying in sud- 
den, inexplicable horror. “John Gault!” 

The ship moved down the ways, a 
clumsy creature that sought surcease in 
an element more friendly than earth. Car- 
rol’s arms, outstretched in supplication, 
were swept from John Gault’s sight. A 
spume of grey smoke rose from under 
the moving keel. The ways shook beneath 
the tread of the leviathan seeking the sea. 
The ship took water in a surge of foam, 
which threw itself high above the deck, 
spraying itself out over the tranquility of 
the river. 

[151] 





Demigods 


Above the tumult of the crowd, high 

and clear, John Gault heard Herrick’s 
voice vibrant with sudden, fleeting en- 
ergy. 
“Hic habet!” he was calling again and 
again. “Hic habet! The river has her!” 
Thereafter; he was still, and John Gault 
regarded him no more, but attempted to 
make out the figure of Carrol upon the 
deck of the vessel. 

The ship was captured, drawn towards 
the dock. Whereas, before, she had 
seemed clumsy, futile, now she seemed at 
ease, swift upon the water. As she was 
moored at the shears, the storm broke 
with a long roll of thunder, obliterating 
land and water in a welter of grey. 


Herrick, that night, was very gay. A re- 
surgence of his former spirit, his ancient 
wit, had come to him. He seemed to be 
bodily more comfortable. 

The river into which the ship had 
plunged, he said, had impressed him 
more profoundly than any event of the 

[152 ] 





John Gault’s Journey 


launching. It was a stream of darkness, 
black, silent, without tide. 

Thereafter, he composed himself for 
sleep. John Gault went out. When he re- 
turned, he found Herrick awake. His 
face was flushed. A fever visibly con- 
sumed him. 

“T have had a strange dream,” he said. 
“Y dreamed that I was once more at din- 
ner in my father’s house. Shaded light 
fell from high-branched candelabra upon 
cup and cloth; a bowl of poppies glowed 
brightly against the darkness. I heard the 
hallowed laughter of memory. I picked a 
spoon from the table and pressed it into 
my flesh. The pain brought relief.” 

He got to his feet, and, before John 
Gault could aid him, walked to the win- 
dow. He gazed into the street. 

An hour later, he said that the lights in 
the room had become increasingly bright. 
Thereafter, for a time, he was still. Short- 
ly, however, he roused himself. His trem- 
bling knees gave under him as he at- 

[153 ] 





Demigods 


tempted to reach the bed. He realized 
that he was dying. 

“Darkness takes me,” he said, but with- 
out bitterness. ‘And with me something 
in the nature of a dream, since any flesh 
is a dream. 

“John Gault, when you seek your 
world, remember there 1s no test for man- 
kind, but we are all measured upon the 
bed of our desire. 

“Tohn Gault, I know you well, know 
your swift, intractable spirit, your pride 
far greater than that of Lucifer. I have 
not pointed out your way to you. I cannot. 
Civilization, the traditions of mankind, 
are not for you. You must find a people 
and a barren land, lead hosts to a newer 
heaven as did your father. Search out 
your land, hew it clear with your hands! 
Do not struggle with the devices and 
tricks of man. Reject them! Do not place 
yourself upon the world. You will betray 
yourself, prove false to the godhead that 
is in you. 

“You will not hearken to me now. You 

[154] 


John Gault’s Journey 


will be as incapable of escaping your 
destiny as I have been in escaping mine. 
You will grow great, pass, and terribly 
die. 

“That is nothing. The real futility is 
that one is bound, that one can render so 
little of oneself.” 

He paused, then went on, his voice 
growing more febrile, yet a quality of 
laughter crept into it. 

“In this extremity I must find some- 
thing to say. I must die with something 
typical. I cannot. I cannot.” 

His voice fell away. His hands trailed 
weakly across the blanket. For an instant, 
a ghost of fantasy returned to him. 

“T am the shadow of a shadow which 
shall shortly cease to be even that,” he 
said. 

He sank back, then suddenly raised 
himself from the bed. 

“Ride your life, John Gault!” he cried. 
“T have never been able to ride mine!” 

His eyelids closed. His lips parted. His 
punchinello nose seemed drawn to a sing- 

ESS 


Demigods 


ular acuteness, sharp as the point of a 
pen. 


Five days later, John Gault returned 
to his work at the shipyard. The vessel 
which had been launched lay at the 
shears. The-first of the three masts had 
been fitted to her, but had not yet been 
stepped or fastened. ‘The shears, like an 
open scissors, threatened to cut the ship 
in two. 

Four men were at work within the hull, 
fitting the great steel shaft of the mast to 
a joist which ran down the length of the 
hull like a gigantic spine. Above them, 
directing their work, was Carrol. About 
him was a quality of arrested motion. All 
his flaring demoniac energy had departed 
from him. He stood like a statue, inert, 
leaden. To John Gault, he said nothing, 
gave no heed. 

Throughout the length of that day, he 
spoke no word. His ribald tongue, even 
his laughter was stilled. During the noon 

[156] 


John Gault’s Journey 


hour, he did not join his crew upon the 
shore, but remained aboard the ship. 

At the middle of the hour John Gault 
heard the beat of a hammer against the 
hull. Peering into the hold, he perceived 
Carrol. Acie, with a great sledge, was 
pounding the steel of the hull. The ham- 
mer fell again and again, all of Carrol’s 
strength behind it, but the blows were 
aimless, strangely like the beatings of a 
bird’s helpless wings. Carrol seemed to 
stroke the steel of the hull as a blinded 
man might touch a hand he loved. 

As the afternoon advanced Carrol’s 
moodiness, his silence, began to have an 
effect upon his crew. They spoke little, 
laughed not at all. As twilight fell, and 
the bell struck, hammer and sledge were 
thrown down, and the men trooped from 
the ship in silence. 

As John Gault passed down the gang- 
plank, Carrol went with him. They 
walked in silence through the yard, pass- 
ing between the stone dolphins at the 
gate. Here, Carrol paused and looked 

[157] 





Demigods 


back at the ship, visible as a darker shad- 
ow against the sky. 

“The second stick should be in the 
shears tomorrow,” he said. “I'll tie that 
bight myself so that hell can’t budge it. 
I’ve loved ships. I’ve loved them more 
than wife or children, but they’re whores. 
Off the ways an’ they’re into the arms of 
whoever’ll hold them. 

“Pll never build another ship. [Ul 
never put flesh to their bodies again an’ 
my own flesh with it. I felt it when that 
one went down the ways... .” 

He turned and went on. 

That night he seemed subject to a cold 
and leaden melancholy that drove his 
wife to fear. In vain she set herself before 
him. In vain she entwisted her heart with 
his, striving to learn the measure of his 
agony. Her useless passion, all her an- 
guish, seemed only to drive him deeper 
into the pit of silence. 

It was nearly midnight when he sought 
out Carrie Warren. John Gault accom- 
panied him. 

[158 ] 





John Gault’s Journey 


The fortune teller’s room was brightly 
lighted. Above the woman’s head, by the 
parrot’s ring, was an oil lamp. This she 
had not bothered to light. Its dullness 
seemed her symbol. 

The parrot screamed as Carrol entered, 
then settled back upon its perch. ‘The wo- 
man raised herself a little. Her leaden 
spirit seemed to slightly breathe, to wake. 
A measure of garrulity took her. 

“Sloop Chespeake’s in,” she said. “The 
first mate himself come here to see me. 
What he want to know? Jus’ anything.” 
The measure of her pride, in view of the 
dark maelstrom in which she lived, was 
childish. 

She took Carrol’s hand and placed it 
palm up upon the table before her. Her 
heavy eyes seemed not to glance at its 
lines. The parrot raised its wings and 
screamed again. 

The woman’s eyes lifted, flickered, 
went out like candles. 

“T see rope,” she said. “I see a rope of 

[159 | 





Demigods 


cold, cruel hemp. It might be a ship’s 
rope or a hangman’s noose. There!” 

Her digital finger pointed downwards 
and for an instant John Gault dreamed 
that he saw upon Carrol’s palm a little 
flickering line of hemp that shuttled like 
a tiny snake-back into darkness. 

The void which had taken her as sud- 
denly blew the woman back. Acie got to 
his feet. 

Looking back, as he left the room, John 
Gault saw the parrot leap from its ring 
to the unlighted lamp above the woman’s 
head. 


The following morning, watching the 
shears at work above the hull, John Gault 
was reminded of the nosing, the nuzzle- 
ing, of some tusked animal, blinded that 
it might be adept at its desk. The two 
limbs of the shears were capped with 
metal like a bull elephant’s tusks. With 
calculated delicacy, yet slowly, fumbling- 
ly, the shears swung up and down, dan- 

[ 160 | 


John Gault’s Journey 


gling the mast like a lesser tooth between 
its own. 

Two steel cables ran to the top of the 
shears, one for each snout-like limb. They 
spun a web and returned to the drum 
from which they arose. A donkey engine, 
set far back in the yard, wound or un- 
wound this drum. 

The mast was bitted to the shears as a 
tooth might be set in a great jaw. Around 
it ran a single line of rope, which in turn 
was set to a lesser drum below the engine. 
By moving the bight of rope thus formed, 
the mast might be moved a little to the 
right or left, delicately, softly, as a mother 
might move a child within the hollow of 
her arm. 

The mast was set above its hold in the 
depths of the ship. The crew clung to it, 
swinging to and fro with it, snapped from 
their feet by its gigantic urge. 

The shears moved with Carrol’s out- 
stretched arm, following it as if impelled 
by an invincible attraction. The move- 
ment ceased. Carrol’s arm_ suddenly 

[ 161 ] 





Demigods 


dropped, giving the signal to drop the 
mast into place. 

There was a sound like the tingling of 
a violin string, infinitely intensified. The 
engine rocked upon its base. The mast did 
not fall. Incorrectly bitted, it had sagged 
against the-bight and there was caught 
and held. 

The men upon the deck commenced to 
run. The mast swayed gently as a sword 
might sway in a hand that is ready to 
strike. There fell silence, broken by the 
rush of feet. 

From the hull of the ship emerged 
Junger, a Swiss, who had tied the bight 
and bit that held the mast to the shears. 
He ran with an arm above his head as if 
to ward off the impending blow. Him, 
Carrol seized and throttled. John Gault 
broke the grip of his hands. 

Carrol’s face was almost yellow in col- 
or. A light foam was upon his lips which 
moved soundlessly. He flung Junger from 
him and commenced to climb the shears. 

Inch by inch he rose against the sky 

[ 162 ] 





John Gault’s Journey 


while the men watched him tense and 
breathless. He gained the web of wire, 
crossed it like a spider, hand to foot, 
pressed his knees against the bight. Little 
by little he worked his way into the mesh 
of rope. The mast continued to sway gent- 


y. 

John Gault could not bear to look at 
him. 

“T had a foreboding of calamity,” he 
later said. ‘“‘He was like a fly in a trap.” 

Junger, out of his head with fear, sud- 
denly found voice. 

“Let loose!’ he called to the engine 
man. “Let loose!” 

Before hand could stop him, the en- 
gineer had loosed the cables that bound 
the tops of the shears. The line ran out, 
stopped. The mast toppled, began to slide 
forward, brushing Carrol with it. 

He attempted to swing clear of the 
bight, was carried by the impetus of the 
mast into the noose, was pressed helpless- 
ly against the mast, the rope at his back. 

Here, skewered against the sky, he 

[ 163 ] 





Demigods 


hung and terribly cursed. The sky 
seemed overcast and clouded. Gently 
swinging, the mast added to his torment, 
making him catch his breath because of 
the killing weight against his breast. 

For a full three minutes he hung thus, 
foulness rolling from his lips in a breath- 
less tide. Like a pigmy, he was buffeted 
against mast and shears, fighting with 
tiny hands, horrible in his failing dignity, 
outraged, helpless, indecent. 

The mast slipped and fell clear, carry- 
ing him with it, snapping him like an in- 
sect into the water. John Gault perceived 
his head disappear, began to rush to his 
aid, stopped as he bobbed up again, ap- 
palled by that which was written upon 
his face. 

Drawing himself from the water, Car- 
rol went to Junger, and with a wrench 
that lay upon the dock, struck him upon 
the head. With the sure instinct of the 
killer, certain that his blow was deadly, 
he turned towards the gate. 

At the gate he was seized, but John 

[ 164 ] 


Ot = Sm RA SRR ARR A A RR AT TEES I ET A 


John Gault’s Journey 


Gault, following him, struck him clear. 
Another guard ran up whom John Gault 
felled, but Carrol still said no word. The 
gang from the yard ran out, surrounding 
the two. Among them was Junger’s broth- 
er. John Gault fought his way clear and 
ran up the street. He was weeping, he 
says, and was almost blinded. 

He saw Acie but once again, believed 
that he was hanged. For years Gault was 
unable to speak of him without tears. 


Upon one occasion, while in Europe, 
Gault became possessed of a sword of ex- 
ceptional beauty, but with the blade un- 
marked. For it he composed a rune, a 
dedication of the sword to Carrol, who, 
in his mind, resembled it. Therefore, it is 
written here. 

L’épée 

Qui me tire tire pour trois; 

Qui me tire engage sa foi; 

Qui me brise n’a rien a soi. 


[165] 


IV. JOHN GAULT GROWN 


J OHN GAULT made entrance into the 
City of Wilmington for the first time 
upon the fourth day of August, 1890. This 
fact is found from two sources; first, from 
John Gault’s own journal (begun within 
five years of this time), which, telling of 
his flight from Philadelphia and of the 
catastrophe of Acie Carrol, tells also how 
he came upon a river, debouching into 
the great mouth of the Delaware, whose 
current seemed brother and kin to his 
own spirit—“tired, tranquil, and stained,” 
how he followed this river to the west and 
came upon the city. Gault was then eight- 
ecn years of age and fully grown. 

The second source is a manifestation of 
his abounding flesh, and differs from the 
first. It is a page from the police court 
record still on file in the Old Municipal 
Building in Wilmington. 

The record is succinct. It tells how a 
man of preternatural size, giving his 

[ 166 ] 





John Gault Grown 


name as Vanois (a name later assumed 
by Gault for the purpose of his writing), 
preached, while drunk, upon the corner 
of Fourth and Market Streets in the City 
of Wilmington; that his hearers were 
amazed and frightened at the red color of 
his skin and the wildness of his appear- 
ance; that one Isaac Hinchman, an officer 
of the peace, endeavored to place him un- 
der arrest and was struck senseless to the 
ground; that the said Isaac Hinchman, 
returning with two officers, again at- 
tempted to make the arrest, whereupon 
“the said Vanois incited his hearers to 
riot and fought the police.” 

There is no record of John Gault’s 
preaching upon this night, no tale of his 
words. Yet, in this history, the singular 
interpretation of his life, motive becomes 
apparent. John Gault speaks with his feet 
upon mountains, calls out from within his 
dream. 

He himself has never been able to put 
any interpretation upon this episode or to 
explain the instinct that caused him to 

[ 167 | 


Demigods 


preach. He regarded it later with laugh- 
ter. “What did I sayP” he remarked once 
to Stackpole, his managing editor and 
factotum. “I had had a dream of the 
country of Delaware. All the land was 
possessed by me and upon it I grew men 
by sowing: salt in furrows of the earth. 
This dream was more real to me than 
litei® 

John Gault, put upon the county at the 
morning session of the Petty Pleas, was 
forced to plead guilty to his dream. Its 
substance, however, he could not make 
plain. Conant was upon the bench. A 
kind-hearted, gentle old man, in all his 
years he had never seen tried a cause like 
this. 

The court room was flecked with shad- 
ows, though the green shades were drawn 
to keep out the heat of the day. The space 
between bar and bench was shadowed. 
The high railings of the dock, the black 
mahogany solidity of the judge’s dais, 
gave it the aspect of a pit within an arena. 

In it John Gault stood and answered 

[ 168 | 


John Gault Grown 


for his dream. His great body was 
bruised and filthy. His clothes hung in 
tatters about him. His eyes were wild, 
charged and burning with the power that 
bound him. He evinced no humor, no wit. 

Conant, who, within two years was to 
descend to final dust, already subject to 
the quietness that preludes the grave, felt 
that presence, obscure, hidden, implac- 
able as a whirlwind which was to bring 
John Gault to destiny; heard the tread of 
catastrophe and event; felt that in his 
court room he was putting to trial force, 
a vis major, bound to past and future; 
hesitating, forebore to pass sentence upon 
it. 

The space back of the bar was deserted 
except for the witness, Hinchman. A 
small man, his face dried and withered 
as the skin of an apple, he leaned towards 
the dock in an effort to render more easy 
the weight of his right arm, strapped 
with bandages to his breast. 

To the questions of the prosecuting at- 
torney, John Gault answered plainly. 

[ 169 ] 





Demigods 


Was his name in fact Vanotis? 

It was not. He had given the name in 
response to an impulse which he did not 
understand. 

Concerning what had he preached? 

He did not know. Some vision had 
come to him which he could not explain. 
In it had been visible all things, the land 
which he sought, the greatness and the 
pride of earth. 

He had fought with the police? 

He had called upon the people to fol- 
low him. He had not known where that 
would lead them. 

The small figure of the judge upon the 
dais remained motionless. The question- 
ing ceased. In the extraordinary narrative 
of the trial a gap of silence occurred. 
Through it, Conant, listening, heard the 
future draw near, realized the end of his 
jurisdiction. 

He passed sentence, however—a 
month’s imprisonment, or if the defend- 
ant chose, sentence remanded, pending 

[ 170 ] 





John Gault Grown 


his good behaviour upon a farm. A bailiff 
led John Gault forth. 

The farm to which Gault was sent was 
at the end of Sussex County. The far- 
mer’s name was Vaughan. His land was as 
barren as a side of the moon. Situated in 
tne delta’ to’ ‘the «rear: of, Rennsneck) 
Vaughan’s acres could not have supported 
three persons. Vaughan had nine, himself 
and eight sons. Set to toil, bitter and un- 
requiting, made one of this family of 
famine, nearly Gault had devoured them 
all in his search for daily bread, and, 
when opportunity was his, had put them 
from him without a word and had fled. 

A month later, barefooted, ragged, he 
had arrived at the town of Lewes where 
he had apprenticed himself to the cob- 
bler. After a few months, in a magazine 
of the time which had fallen into his pos- 
session, he read of a tunnel which was be- 
ing driven through the earth by means of 
which man might cross the world in a 
day. This, the printed fiction of a fantas- 
tic mind, had seemed to him reasonable. 

uaa 





Demigods 


Instantly, in a manner typical of him, he 
had set off to view it. 

Then nineteen years of age, naive as 
only he could be, knowing nothing of 
geography and caring nothing, animated 
by that pitiless curiosity and ambition 
that were to drive him always, sleeping 
beneath the hedgerows and begging his 
food, he wandered for months, seeking 
this wonder which had captivated his 
mind. Disillusioned, months older, he had 
returned to Wilmington, and laughing at 
his own folly, had proceeded to sustain 
himself as best he might. 

The times were very hard. He found 
living and the processes of his body just 
possible. Without a cent of money, with 
the ragged clothes upon his back, existing 
from hand to mouth, collecting rags, 
stealing when necessity and possibility 
coincided, fortunate to eat a meal a day, 
he perpetrated the first of his jests—he 
proceeded to grow fat. His steps there- 
after were prodigious, and like a treading 
elephant, he marked where he stamped. 

[172] 


John Gault Grown 


Opportunity aiding him, his first legit- 
imate job was as copy boy upon a single 
sheet newspaper, a fly-by-night which ex- 
isted only by virtue of unpaid paper bills. 
The press was run by hand: the news was 
brought to book chiefly by word of 
mouth: the owner and publisher, drunk 
most of his time, derelict the remainder, 
cared nothing for success or failure. John 
Gault, then twenty, set the type, inked the 
frames, put the paper upon the street, 
worked twenty hours a day, and, miracu- 
lous memory helping him, forgot nothing 
which he had ever seen or heard, remem- 
bered even to laugh. 

There occurred minor catastrophe 
which brought him above the horizon. 
The paper became meanly bankrupt, and 
Gault, trading his unpaid wage claims 
for a hundred dollars, purchased paper, 
stock, and small equipment at public 
auction. Thereafter emerged John Gault, 
owner and publisher. 

At this transformation he laughed 
mightily. His immense body took new 

PE7Oul 


Demigods 


life, though it needed none. Reborn from 
within his mind, one of fantastic delicacy, 
from nothing into everything his paper 
rose. Housed in a shaky building upon 
Shipley Street, behind doors so crazily 
hung that they would not stay shut, be- 
neath a roof a wind might have destroyed, 
in a chaos of disorder, in a litter of rub- 
bish months old, Gault found the essen- 
tial, truth if it happened to be such, clung 
to it, published it, grew great thereby. 
Ironically, he signed all that he wrote 
Vanots, the name and style under which 
he had been tried months before. 

At the end of three years, counting his 
assets upon fingers scarcely broad enough 
for the task, he had a tooth set with a 
small diamond. This gesture, flamboyant, 
vulgar, was more. It signified a stage 
of the decadence into which he had 
passed, the delicacy of his power, the 
measure of his fantastic genius. 

He was then twenty-four years old as a 
human being counts its age. Gault count- 
ed nothing. He had reached a stage, a 

[174] 





John Gault Grown 


level platform from which he might look 
around. He did so. His dream had van- 
ished. With it had gone his world. He 
had demolished them both. He had eaten 
his spirit fat. Now obesity of the body 
was conquering him. Always grotesque, 
he was growing repulsive. Immediately 
he nearly went mad. 

The time was dusk. In the littered 
room which served him as his office, be- 
hind a pasteboard partition separating it 
from the floor where his presses were at 
work, he rose to his feet and screamed. 
His pressmen, rushing in, were stopped 
at the door by his outstretched arms. 

“Out of the way!” he shouted. 

They fled. Thereafter, John Gault ran 
amuck through his success. His vast body 
quivering, his skin empurpled in his rage 
and shame, he hurled himself upon the 
moving presses. From them he tore the 
iron rolls, and, using one of these as a 
club, beat whatever came before him. 

The light failed. Darkness brought to 
him the second and more poignant phase 

Be Bs 





Demigods 


of his agony. Through the purlieu that 
flanked the printing floor, he fled towards 
the river. The street lamps were just lit. 
Grotesquely, they lighted a behemoth 
whose blood was real, but whose flight 
was beyond the borders of the imagin- 
able. 

At midnight, in a dive along the water- 
front, exalted and depressed, his vast en- 
ergy not yet exhausted, he called for food, 
for a woman for himself—“A mad Isolde 
for a mountainous Tristam!’—and when 
both had been produced, set one opposite 
the other, touching neither, talking end- 
lessly. 

‘Perceive me,” he said. “My body an 
ironic masterpiece impinged upon life, 
colossal grotesquerie! Since there are 
things which I can never touch, never 
hear, I subject my spirit to fine, laughing 
torture. My fine appetite must go un- 
clouded!” 

A great gale of laughter shook him. 

“What if I were to kill you now?” he 


7 





John Gault Grown 


said. “Subject you eternally to the pattern 
of myself as I am subjected. I should kill 
you with cold, fine-drawn technique. It 
would be gigantically humorous, quaint 
and grim as hell. It would be worthy of 
my ingenious monstrosity!” 

The woman simpered, understanding 
nothing. Before her John Gault threw the 
contents of his pockets, in all the sum of 
six hundred dollars. The woman snatched 
at the money, and Gault walked out into 
darkness. 

This episode, in its entirety, passed into 
Wilmington history, became legend, 
grew and was never forgotten. John 
Gault never denied the incident, and, 
when questioned concerning it, laughed, 
but his small beady eyes grew wet with 
emotion. 

“T was mad,” he said. “dnd I enjoyed 
tL 

He placed his destiny and his dreams 
behind him. That issue of the paper 
which he had destroyed was put upon the 

bay iee 





Demigods 


street two days late without explanation, 
and in this silence, Gault’s figure, already 
preternatural, was enlarged. 

It would have been interesting to ob- 
serve his progress, thereafter. The force, 
the violence and sound, of the intellectual 
débacle through which he had passed, 
had blown him up through a trajectory 
so wide and so high that the nerves of his 
eyes were stunned in contemplation of the 
things that awaited him. 

He lost no time, but reduced to posses- 
sion what he could. He studied law, and, 
over objection, was admitted to the bar 
within the short space of two years. 
Blackstone enthralled him. ‘The style,” 
he notes, “is a slow and ponderous march 
as if the words were companies of seven- 
teenth century pikemen. The phrases 
wind their way through the most tortu- 
ous defiles as smoothly as a column upon 
the march.” The volume is marked with 
pencilled comments, often in doggerel, 
inimitably characteristic of John Gault: 

[178 | 





John Gault Grown 





“Now a lady’s dower 

Is her right bower, 

And nothing can aliene it, 
Unless the lass 

Become an ass, 

Seal a release and sign it.” 


One line in the volume is deeply un- 
derscored, and in it one reads much of 
Gault. It is as follows—“‘A being inde- 
pendent of any other, hath no rule to pur- 
fe mepeicdty) it, in erench/1s)yonn 
Gault’s comment—“Le Vrai Histoire des 
Dieux.” 

John Gault entered court but once. 
Then the jury, astonished at his appear- 
ance, at his small trembling voice, broken 
in nervousness, issuing from his moun- 
tainous body, laughed as he spoke. No 
movement that he made failed to cause 
laughter, not of derision, but of genuine 
amusement. Gault grew confused, piti- 
fully embarrassed. Afraid, he turned to 
face his tormentors. It was too much. 
The laughter, once suppressed, became 
unrestrained. 

[179] 





Demigods 


Born an aesthete, lifted from the mud 
of a Dunkard farm, he had known him- 
self to be hideous but he had never con- 
ceived himself to be funny. The effect of 
this knowledge was ironic. He starved 
himself; he banted; he dieted; he en- 
dured a_course of abdominal exercises. 
His girth continued to increase; his van- 
ity grew with it. What he endured be- 
tween the two cannot be written. He com- 
plained outwardly but once. “J have fall- 
en into a jelly,” he said bitterly. 

Pushing, vast, obtrusive, he intruded 
into whatever society or circle pleased 
him most. Once therein, he remained, 
was accepted. It became a common thing 
at Assemblies to perceive him revolving 
upon the dance-floor, the vast expanse of 
his shirt front like a white sail upon a 
rose-colored sea. The mothers of daugh- 
ters feared him, tampered with him none 
the less, regarded him as a beast of apo- 
calyptic power. 

Opposition delighted him, whetted his 
subtle evanescent appetite. In the space 

[ 180 | 


John Gault Grown 








of three years, he acquired three other 
newspapers, one other in Wilmington, 
two in the Southern portion of the state. 
Between them he ran. That word is in- 
adequate. In Seaford at noon, he would 
be in Wilmington by night. He read and 
wrote as he ran. Blinded by activities, he 
permitted those activities to increase. 


When not in the country, John Gault 
lived in an apartment upon the tenth, the 
top floor, of a building which he owned. 
Here, dinner having been served to him, 
John Gault, his garments loosened, at 
ease for the first time in the day, would 
gaze upon the city, just beginning to be 
lighted, at the dark line of the distant 
Delaware. 

Upon these occasions he clothed his 
vast body in a kimona of blue Danaedo 
silk, vivid with a flight of storks across 
its borders. He thrust out his limbs. His 
puffy arms, the skin clear and pink, would 
rest upon the arms of his chair. His chins 
cascaded into his great chest, which 

f 181 | 





Demigods 


would puff and blow as he fought for air 
in the summer heat. 

Seen thus, his aspect was that of a huge 
mischievous child which, tired of play, 
stretches itself at ease and permits fancy 
to touch it. His attitude contained an ap- 
peal, naive, ingenuous, almost wistful. 
One perceived the illimitable range of 
John Gault’s wish. 

To Stackpole, his favorite and assist- 
ant, sitting here with him, John Gault 
expressed himself. 

“Tf am the Ariel of this lesser sphere,” 
he said. “Light as air, as infinitely elu- 
sive. The magic that springs from be- 
neath my hands is incalculable, ineluct- 
able, for in me there is nothing upon 
which destiny or cause may work. I am 
ether, immaterial, unbound, forever, eter- 
nally free fi 

None the less, he was aware of a false- 
ness, of a sense, plain to him, that he was 
betraying the greatness of his destiny. 
“What can a man bear? I can throw off 
every possession, reduce all things which 

[ 182 | 








John Gault Grown 


bind me, to dust. If I were to toss away 
all that which I have gained, all that 
which I have become, I should be free.” 

He spoke with a sigh as if he found 
compensation in this view of himself. 
None the less, Stackpole, writing of him 
upon the occasion of the absurd duel 
which grew out of John Gault’s only love 
affair, characterizes him as follows: 

“A slattern and a Sampson, he prefers 
his honey torn from the belly of a hon- 
ess.” 


Upon Sundays, John Gault was at his 
subtle, evanescent best. Upon these days, 
Stackpole with him, he “walked out” 
upon the esplanade that fronted the 
Brandywine. This was the custom of the 
city. 

Upon these days, John Gault and 
Stackpole rose late. Gault, who ordinar- 
ily troubled not at all with such things, 
dressed in a tumult of words addressed to 
his valet. Stackpole waited in silence. 

[ 183 ] 





Demigods 


Bring him pants! 

The valet scurried from the room, re- 
turning with plaid trousers that might 
have covered two capstans. 

How’s the sun? 

Sun’s high in the sky. 

For the last two Sundays it has rained, 
and John Gault is in eagerness to walk 
and meet his friends. 

Bring him boots! 

They are produced, tan, refulgent, 
highly polished, but Gault hesitates, con- 
siders spats, rejects them finally as an ef- 
feminacy. Upon the conflict of John 
Gault’s earth and John Gault’s purple, an 
essay might be written. 

A shirt, if you please. 

His tone of voice is easier. The behe- 
moth is subject to a lesser strain now that 
the flurry of dressing is almost over. The 
shirt is brought. Its shade is a light green 
crossed with small jet lines, a pattern 
which Gault himself has designed. In 
size it would do for a sail. 

A tie is arranged. Perceive John Gault 

[ 184 ] 





John Gault Grown 


now as he emerges from his dressing 
room. His face is pink, flushed and roll- 
ing. Beneath his chin, cleft and shaven, is 
his cravat, broadly tied, a small pearl pin 
clinging like a tear to its silk. Across his 
colossal waist is a vest, double-breasted, 
delicately grey. The curve and set of his 
coat is perfection perfected, serge 
stretched across a hillside. His trousers 
are two epic cycles. His small feet are 
like polished points beneath them. 

He bows to Stackpole—this is a por- 
tion of the settled ceremony—and selects 
his stick. He calls this cane his “divining 
rod,” his “wand of conjury.” It speaks to 
him in little sibiliancy as he swings it, 
and John Gault, his vast head down, af- 
fects to listen to it. 

“Hear—Stackpole,”’ he would say. 
“Within an hour, John Gault shall meet 
a woman, cross a man, endure an experi- 
ence ? 

Thereafter, he would tuck the cane be- 
neath his arm, and he and Stackpole 
would go out together. 

[185 ] 








Demigods 


Wilmington viewed the two with un- 
failing interest. The time of their ap- 
pearance was generally just before the 
hour of church. At this time the walk 
along the Brandywine, from the old Sad- 
ler mansion to the upper bridge, was 
thronged with people. 

Below was the river. Beyond was the 
more ancient portion of the city. The 
walk and road lay upon an embankment, 
curving with the stream. Upon the left 
were a number of houses, a mud-coloured 
race between them and the road—the 
Bishopstead, a grey, gabled building, 
Doctor Elwell’s home, and the Sadler 
mansion. For each of these houses there 
were gardens, measured and designed in 
some spacious, anterior time. 

The throng upon the walk and road 
was always greatest at the time when the 
first pealing of the church bells rang 
through the city. The sound of the bells, 
infinitely repeated, some distant, some 
near, seemed to ruffle lightly the women’s 
garments, to disturb in some unknown 

[ 186 | 





John Gault Grown 


manner the equanimity of the men. 
Thereafter, the pace of conversation 
quickened, the nods of acquaintances be- 
came brisker, as if time were limited or 
the sunlight brighter. 

It was John Gault’s custom to enter the 
walk from its upper end. Here a small 
path ran to the pavement. John Gault’s 
entrance upon it was like that of a pea- 
cock upon a stage which he has created. 
His vast body, gaudily dressed, seemed 
painted against the background of the 
woods. The wandering filip of his cane 
pointed out his acquaintances. To Stack- 
pole, he interposed a running fire of com- 
ment. 

“There’s Mrs. General Enderby and 
little Fanny Elwell—bless her heart!” 
He bowed, sensuously pleased at the 
color in movement upon the road. 

“There’s old Tom Stoat.—The last 
time he went huntin’ he mistook a dam 
top for the lower ford, and came out with 
his pockets full of minnows——” 

He whisked his cane to and fro as if 

[ 187 ] 





Demigods 


performing some feat of legerdemain, 
and spoke with his down-country accent. 

“And there’s the Bishop, now is 

John Gault spoke to everyone, missed 
none, saw everything. Stackpole, subser- 
vient, followed him. 

The church bells sounded again, giv- 
ing final call. Groups commenced to 
move towards the hill. John Gault went 
on to the house of his mistress. 





This woman, Gault’s mistress, posses- 
sed a savour unknown to Stackpole. Like 
a woman of Gaul, she might have worn a 
short sword at her girdle, a ring of iron, 
for, a: necklace," at her ))throat./ Smale 
swart, thick-boned, appropriately she 
might have stood before the gateway of a 
medieval caravansery. In a camp or cara- 
van, she would have been at home. 

Her name was a singular one—Ally 
Emetté. Her claim of blood was Russian 
by French. She had been born in a storm 
upon the Russian frontier. Thence, she 
had begun an interminable journey West. 

[ 188 ] 





John Gault Grown 


Endowed with such life that nothing 
might overtake her or declare her van- 
quished, she had lived as she pleased, had 
met Gault in Paris, upon one of his trips 
to Europe, and fabulously overborne by 
him, had followed him home. In appear- 
ance she was thick-waisted, broad, her 
face too heavy to be beautiful. In her, 
however, dwelt a quality of fire that pro- 
jected itself from her like a torch. 

To Gault she rendered a spiritual ac- 
countancy so strict that nothing remained 
to herself. No fact or shadow of fact con- 
cerning him remained unaccounted for 
to her. She was aware of every plan that 
he made. She stormed at him and at her- 
self when any hope of his miscarried. 

She said once to Stackpole: “I say to 
myself—IT am myself—this 1s John 
Gault’—to keep us apart. Other I should 
be in two places and suffer intolerable 
sicknesses.”” 


To John Gault she was superbly mod- 
erator, audience, and supplement. Before 
[ 189 ] . 





Demigods 


her even his poignant vanity was as- 
suaged. Incomparably she possessed the 
difficult art of informing him. Stackpole 
did not see her fail. 

Once, during the months covered by 
this narrative, a gentleman to whom 
Gault was .indebted remarked before a 
gathering at which Gault was not pres- 
ent, ‘John Gault is a clown to whose face 
a mask should be nailed.” The phrase 
was so exact in truth that Gault could 
raise no barrier of his imagination or of 
his mind against it. It reduced him near- 
ly to a state of fear. Going to Ally Em- 
etté, he cast the speech before her. Stack- 
pole was present. 

Emetté answered: 

“Everyone knows that you give to the 
texture of your life the care that a belle 
gives to her complexion.” 

For an instant, only, Stackpole sus- 
pected her of irony. 


John Gault was incapable of entering 
even before Ally Emetté without some in- 
[ 190 ] 





John Gault Grown 


credible boutonniere of fancy in his but- 
tonhole. If he pleased, he might compose 
a Cimmerian history of himself, giving 
himself a legendary ancestry—‘“The Son 
of the Red Horse, descended in a tempest 
from the distaff side, from the sky to a 
rolling accompaniment of thunder.” If 
he chose, he would tell fantastic stories 
for the pleasure of Emetté herself. At 
such times, he would talk the night away, 
dawn in, until Emetté’s turbanned head 
had sunk in weariness. John Gault, con- 
tinuing, unexhausted, would play about 
like a vast, excited child. He would 
watch the sun rise, shout like a barbarian 
when it appeared, call to Stackpole and 
bid him perceive this day. 

Latterly, his excitement increasing, he 
purchased three new papers, ran them all 
himself, gave a public auditorium to the 
city, purchased a country place. When 
Emetté expostulated, he cried—‘‘Own one 
newspaper, you buy three. Jz 1s the por- 
son in the ink.” It was more. John Gault 
was endeavouring to add the accolade of 

[191] 





Demigods 


secure position to his greatness, never 
realizing that his strength lay in his vul- 
garity, that like Antaeus he took from 
earth. Emetté phrased it for him. 

“Not content with being pointed out, 
now you wish to be pointed out favor- 
ably. You have become a parvenu.” 


The day upon which John Gault en- 
tered upon his country seat was the four- 
teenth of July, in the year 1910. It would 
have been interesting to observe this sin- 
gular journey. A small road wagon bore 
him, Emetté, and Stackpole, who had 
been set at leisure for the day. John Gault 
desired to enter upon his land as a coun- 
try gentleman. The picture remained in- 
complete. Said Gault—“I should wear a 
broad-brimmed hat.” 

The day was very hot. The horses’ 
hooves beat up dust which followed the 
wagon in a light cloud. With the passing 
of time Gault seemed subject to some 
strange change of skin. Sweat rolled from 
his face, wet his clothing, mingled with 

[ 192 ] 





John Gault Grown 


the dust. The dust seemed a deadly grey 
powder which threatened his vitality, 
dulled his mind, subtly oppressed him. 
At times he quit the wagon, walked be- 
fore or behind it. This physical action 
seemed an antidote to his unwilling 
thought. He became gay again, shouted 
to Stackpole or Emetté, trolled snatches 
of song. Emetté remained in the wagon. 
Her hands were clasped beneath her 
chin. Her air was cynical, abstruse. She 
perceived Gault’s gift for endless dream- 
ing, saw clearly the ailment of his suffer- 
ing egoism, remained motionless and dis- 
tant. 

In some subtle psychopannychism, al- 
ternately, John Gault’s spirit was lifted 
or languished and died. He records it— 
“We have driven all day into a country 
that seems known to me, my vision quick- 
ening.” The phrase is barbed. He writes 
—the words are sudden, hopeless—“Cry 
out my dream!” 

One may perceive John Gault in the 
wagon, gather hints of the marshalling 

[ 193 | 


Demigods 


of events upon some unknown intrasi- 
gent sphere. At the Blueball the horses 
were watered. Gault descended from the 
wagon, slipped, and fell. Said Emetté— 
“You wear your land upon your sleeve.” 


John Gault’s farm consisted of some 
three hundred acres. It ran to the Sad- 
lers’ place upon the North, thence to the 
river, the Brandywine. The house was 
upon high land. A garden lay behind it. 
‘This, due to the conformation of the land, 
seemed to be at the end of the earth. A 
fringe of bracken at its outer edge cut off 
sight. 

To this garden Emetté retreated as to 
a refuge. The color of her dress was al- 
ways in sight against the bracken. She lay 
at full length in a long chair. Through- 
out the day she remained thus—subdued 
in some unanswerable phantasy. She 
rarely spoke. At night she went early to 
bed, lighting her way up the darkness of 
the stairs with an oil lamp, a smoking 
torch, held above her head. In derision, 

[194 ] 


John Gault Grown 


John Gault named the garden “Abime- 
lech’s refuge,” said that Emetté had sac- 
rificed the forty personalities of her per- 
son upon the single hearthstone of hzs 
home. 

John Gault seemed subject to some 
force which he could not explain. He 
purchased a new farm, mortgaged the 
two, bought blooded cattle which he 
drove to the fields or to the docks him- 
self. He visited his neighbours, joined the 
local hunt. At a meeting he met Eva Sad- 
ler. At once, the course of his life was 
changed. 


Emetté and John Gault parted as 
friends. She did not leave the garden. 
Gault saw her there one evening. He ap- 
proached her without any affectation of 
feeling. The sky above the bracken was 
dark, but light was reflected from the 
windows of the house. From this their 
faces might be perceived. Emetté re- 
mained in her chair. The afternoon it had 
rained: the ground was soft. John Gault 
lifted the chair, and one by one, placed 

[195 | 





Demigods 


small stones beneath the legs to prevent 
them sinking in the earth. It was a ges- 
ture like the offer of a cloak, and was ac- 
cepted as such. Thereafter, the pair 
talked. Said John Gault—“In this gar- 
den, to-night, time seems to be at an 
end.” : 

Emetté, incapable of any bathos, made 
no reply, realized that Gault did not in- 
tend the speech as such. The two talked 
of the past. Of this Emetté had the best, 
was able to speak with less apparent hurt, 
with greater sincerity. John Gault showed 
a tendency to retreat, to cover his hurt 
with gestures. He struggled to maintain 
the scene, not consciously, but due to 
some inner quality which was strained. 
Emetté ceded it to him, and, in ceding it, 
did not triumph. 

For an hour or more the two talked. It 
was late when Emetté rose. “I find it 
difficult to remember so much,” she said. 

She left the garden. She did not enter 
the house. John Gault did not follow 
her. She departed as one is born or one 

[ 196 ] 





John Gault Grown 


dies. So all questions of taste were an- 
swered. 


John Gault in love was a fool in a 
fever. His enormous impulse was curbed 
by an equal reaction. That reaction was 
fear. Said Gault—“I wander through 
the flower beds of the lower garden with 
sincerity, or with ability.” 

The Sadler place adjoined his own. In 
the third week of their acquaintance, he 
invited Eva Sadler to tea. This picture 
should be presented. 

John Gault rose late. To keep his pal- 
ate clean, he saw no one before the event. 
He bothered scarcely to dress. Clothed in 
trousers, a sweater upon his torso, black 
mules upon his feet, he entered the gar- 
den. Here, he remained throughout the 
afternoon. The day was very hot, the hills 
hazed with mist. Gault was rendered un- 
quiet, suffered uneasiness. Some essence 
of his spirit, hitherto unknown to him, 
seemed determined to search him out. It 
was as if this gave order to his senses— 

[197] 





Demigods 


“Make plain that which you perceive.” 

A ring of flesh seemed to press upon his 
heart. Gault was inclined to laugh. “Love 
is dropsical,” he said. 

It was dusk when Eva Sadler ap- 
peared. John Gault met her at the gar- 
den. The chair in which she elected to 
sit was chosen by her perversely. Gault 
struggled, his huge bulk, bowing, to 
maneuvre her into any other. Eva, delib- 
erately, set him aside. 

The chair was a cane-backed, rattan- 
covered throne of an incredible barbar- 
ity. Brought to the garden by Emetté, 
used by her as favored seat, otherwise its 
history was unknown. Eva seated herself 
in it with a kind of balanced gravity like 
that of a child. John Gault, exasperated, 
teetered beyond her. The two talked. 

Amethysts, said Eva, had always de- 
lighted her. Had Gault ever seen the Si- 
berian stones? 

Gault made no reply. Some essence of 
beauty, as yet almost unknown to him, 
was near to making him sick. He felt it, 

[ 198 ] 


John Gault Grown 


longed for it, became exasperated when 
he was unable to grasp it. Subtly, Eva be- 
came aware of this. 

She spoke of it later to a friend. “It 
remained incomplete. I had expected 
him to ask me to give myself to him.” 

Upon this occasion, strangely, Gault 
seemed impelled to talk about himself. 
He did this disparagingly. He spoke of 
his life in the Valley of the Israel, of the 
solemn drudgery of the Dunkards, re- 
quiring a miracle of self-abnegation like 
that of the ant, of the soil which had so 
nearly consumed him. Abruptly, his mood 
changing, he told of his first sight of the 
sea off the Delaware coast. ‘““The sky was 
raw,” he said. ““There was surf that beat 
like hooves upon the beach. I wished to 
mount the wind and ride through fields 
of glittering ice.” 

An exaltation came upon him. He 
seemed bent on measuring himself against 
the world even to his own disparage- 
ment. His vast body quivered. A change 
like rage rushed over him. The teacup, 

[199 ] 


Demigods 


which was upon the arm of his chair, he 
dashed to the ground. Abruptly, he got to 
his feet. Eva remained seated, apparently 
did not even wonder at him. 


In the days that followed, Gault en- 
livened her,.made her miserable, harassed 
her and her family in the attempt to 
make her his. Always a durability which 
he could not master remained. He might 
bend her until she assumed the aspect of 
a beaten child. At such times her shoul- 
ders were bowed; her breast was flat. 
Tears, at which she was always ready to 
laugh, stood in her eyes. Gault remained 
near her, part of her, was a fool before 
her when she got to her feet. She pos- 
sessed a quality of anger, cold, immacu- 
late, moving behind some contortion of 
her body, that reduced him to a child. 
She made small gestures of her hands as 
she spoke, calling him a god-damned 
beast! 

John Gault knew madness which in- 
creased with time. Pin-pricks harassed 

[ 200 ] 





John Gault Grown 


him. His grossness of body was like an 
itch upon his skin. His head, embryonic, 
vast, tormented him. He described it as 
the head of a baby, the head of a slut, 
longed, he said, to cut it off. He descended 
to the use of unguents upon his skin; he 
banted at morning and at night. Through- 
out it all, his body, in gargantuan jest, re- 
mained unchanged. 

Throughout this, his naiveté, his force 
remained: too, he remained charmed 
with the life which he led. His activities 
multiplied. They were colored by a hun- 
ger for a tradition which he could not en- 
compass—“A tradition of gentle gentle- 
manhood,” Gault phrased it ironically. 
He increased the number of his blooded 
cattle, said in jest that he would repopu- 
late the countryside. The speech stung. 
John Gault was received increasingly 
coldly. None the less, he would not be- 
have. Upon a later day, he elected to 
drive a herd of his own cattle to market. 
In the time required to write such a com- 
munication, there came to his hand a let- 

[ 201 ] 





Demigods 


ter from George Elder, one of his neigh- 
bours, stating categorically, that—‘‘A 
gentleman does not drive his steers to 
market with his own hand.” 

John Gault’s reply was ribald. “Elder’s 
innocency must be extreme,” he said. 
“He is unable to distinguish heifers from 
steers.” 

Eva hunted throughout the fall and 
winter. Gault learned to ride, joined the 
local hunt. None the less, the business of 
fox-hunting made him sick. A hunting 
whip was one of the incidents of his sin- 
gular duel. In the meantime, his activi- 
ties became increasingly feverish. He 
planned a house to be built upon the hill 
of his estate, began the excavation, ceased 
to make new plans. He submitted them to 
Eva Sadler and was smiled at for his 
pains. Thereafter, he caused the work to 
be stopped. The break which he created 
upon the brow of the hill remains to this 
day, and the hole, ironically, was chris- 
tened in honour of Gault, “Dunkard’s 
Heart:y, 

2ORht 


John Gault Grown 


In this period, compelled by some in- 
stinct of atavism that he did not try to 
comprehend, as if assuagement of his 
spirit, John Gault took to the soil. When 
the wheat was being threshed, he en- 
tered his own and his neighbours’ fields, 
working with the men of the threshing 
crews. The time was mid-July: the heat 
was intense. For days the rays of the sun 
struck down from the molten cauldron 
of the sky. In the mid-afternoon the field- 
hands were forced to stop anu rest. Not 
so Gault. He toiled without ceasing from 
the time the threshing crew took the field 
till dusk when all work ceased. The la- 
bor seemed to give him ease, to be an 
anodyne to the pain of thought. Upon it, 
he made characteristic comment—“Of 
late, I have sat still too often.” 

None the less, in the fields, he remained 
fantastic, the embodiment of the impos- 
sible, haunted by strange doubts and eva- 
sive dreams. He looked like a behemoth 
among the sheaves of wheat, perceived 
the work and his labor as part of the same 

[ 203 ] 





Demigods 


colossal jest. Ihe sweat of his body made 
his clothing cling to him, causing him to 
resemble some crude sculpture of Hercu- 
lean toil. In the jest, as part of the same 
somber comedy, he composed a rhyme, 
putting it into the mouths of the men 
working with him: 


“‘Barley’s good 

Wheat is sound 

Time and world 

Spring from ground iH 





At night colossal plans afflicted him: 
some of these were the dreams of a par- 
venu. For the first time, in a kind of meg- 
lomania, he perceived himself to be 
great. Once, before his valet, he began— 
“T, John Gault,” paused, laughed with 
sudden sanity at the expression upon the 
man’s face. He perceived himself as a 
country gentleman, was surprised that the 
gentlemen of the neighborhood did not 
evalue him as such. He gave little time to 
his newspapers: ink, he said, he had put 

[ 204 ] 





John Gault Grown 


behind him. A year before he had held 
ink to be his strength on earth. 

In the middle of the summer, abrupt- 
ly, he was asked a question by Eva Sad- 
ler—“Where are you goinge” For a brief 
period, he perceived the abyss over which 
he hung, so high above his own earth that 
he was afflicted by both vertigo and nos- 
talgia. “I shall go home,” Gault said. 


This, he endeavoured to do. He re- 
turned to Wilmington, and for a short 
time worked upon his newspapers. Sud- 
denly, it seemed to him that he had grown 
tired. His desire lay in the country which 
he had quitted. In a letter to Stackpole, 
then in Europe, he wrote—“I have been 
subject to a strange change. I have lost 
my world and fatled to gain the other. I 
have betrayed myself.” Stackpole’s re- 
ply was brief. “Bosh! Gault writes like a 
man who awaits an untimely end.” 

Abruptly, Stackpole was ordered back. 
A cable lent itself to John Gault’s phrases 
—“T shall run for governor. Return at 

[ 205 | 





Demigods 


once.’ Amazed, Stackpole answered 
without code. “You are mad.” He re- 
turned, however. 

Stackpole reached Wilmington upon 
the fourth day of July, 1912. Seeing 
Gault upon his arrival, later he remarked 
to a friend—“Gault has the look of a man 
not of this world. He is as mad as the 
Gaderene swine into whom devils had 
entered before they ran down into the 
$6a,1) 


Together the two stumped the state. 
Gault spoke at Middletown, at Odessa, 
at Smyrna, at Laurel, at Seaford. This 
within a time of two weeks. His news- 
papers aiding, he gained converts. His 
speeches contained doctrines close to the 
single tax. “Your land is yours,” he said 
to the farmers who heard him. “Let no 
man put a price upon your labor or upon 
the produce that you have made.” 

His vast reputation, his known eccen- 
tricities, gained him a hearing in those 
places where otherwise he would have 

[ 206 ] 





John Gault Grown 


gained none. At Blackbird, where a ten- 
ant farmer met his phrases with a direct 
demand for land, within an hour Gault 
gave him a sixty acre tract, then and there 
purchased at a cost of some seven thou- 
sand dollars. 

The gesture was grandiloquent. Its ef- 
fect was electrical. Always a demagogue, 
he had now become dangerous. Gault 
was cut upon the streets of Wilmington. 
Advertising was removed from his news- 
papers. Even Stackpole was affected. “Is 
he setting an example for us to follow?” 
he inquired. 

None the less, Gault persisted. He 
mortgaged his assets to gain money. 
Thereafter, he moved through the state 
with the rapidity of a whirlwind. Upon 
the night of the election, he returned to 
his country seat. That evening he dined 
at the Sadlers’. “I have come home,” said 
John Gault. 

Dinner at the Sadlers’ partook of a 
stately, ordered ceremony. The table was 
a long, walnut oval set upon a trellis of 

[ 207 | 





Demigods 


thin, spider legs. About it the family 
was ranged. Judge Sadler sat at its head. 
Eva generally was seated upon his right. 
Usually she held a book, to which, 
throughout the meal, she gave negligent 
attention. Gault sat just beyond her. 

This night there was also present a 
young man named Bidwell, a suitor of 
Eva’s. Him, John Gault had met before 
at this house. He had the look of extreme 
fine breeding—lean, clean-featured, dis- 
tinguished in appearance. His manners 
and bearing were irreproachable. 

The meal seemed interminable. None 
seemed willing to leave the table. Eva 
spilled her wine. The red liquid fell upon 
the tablecloth, spotting it, dripped upon 
the floor. One by one, as if by signal, 
those present left the room, though the 
meal was not over. Eva and John Gault 
were left alone. 

Eva made a small gesture of her hands. 

“They hate you,” she said. 

Said John Gault simply—“Fly with 
me!” 

[ 208 ] 


John Gault Grown 


“Mountebank!” cried Eva. “You have 
created a caricature.” 

Biviy life is: as jest,’ rephed)sGault: 
“And you have made it miserable.” 

He rose and left the room. In the hall 
beyond the dining room lay a rug. He 
tripped upon it, falling headlong. Here, 
he lay, struggling to rise, his vast body 
panting with his exertions. Suddenly, he 
perceived, rather than felt, the blows of 
a whip upon his shoulders. Looking up, 
he saw Bidwell. The young man’s face 
was livid. In his hands he held a short 
riding whip, of the sort used to whip fox- 
hounds to a line. With this, again and 
again, he struck at Gault, who now keen- 
ly felt the blows. 

There was silence save for the thresh 
of the whip and Gault’s agonized sigh- 
ing. He made no other sound. No one 
was in sight. All members of the family 
had disappeared. He struggled to rise, 
finally getting to his feet. 

“Why do you strike me?” he asked of 
the young man. 

[ 209 ] 


Demigods 


“T will fight you,” cried Bidwell. “At 
any place and in any manner you desire.” 

John Gault threw back his head and 
laughed. The laughter was immense, 
trolling, filling the house. Seemingly, it 
would never stop. 

“{ will invite you to come with me,” 
he cried. 


In the rear of Gault’s country place 
lay a stone quarry. To it John Gault con- 
ducted Bidwell. The quarry had been 
abandoned for some time. Barren, wild, 
it was covered with bracken and with 
furze. Its floor was pitted as though by 
fallen meteors. Great gaps appeared 
upon its surface. [The ground was pitted 
with shale and rock. A small stream 
seeped over the edge of the high cliff that 
encircled the quarry. 

Said Bidwell, recounting his experi- 
ence—“There was a bright moon. It 
shone upon the center of the quarry, 
making plain all that was within it. 

[ 210 | 


John Gault Grown 


Gault led: I followed. I did not know 
what was in his mind.” 

At the center of the quarry Gault 
turned. Without a word he began to place 
one rock upon another, creating a cairn. 
Young Bidwell watched him in amaze- 
ment. 

Said Gault—“Let us see which of us 
can build the highest monument to him- 
self. All else has failed me.” 

Bidwell turned and fled. 


Gault returned to his home. That night 
he did not sleep, did not even turn to bed. 
The sound of his footsteps resounded 
through the house. His servants, fright- 
ened, telephoned for Stackpole. The lat- 
ter arrived at five o'clock. Dawn was in 
the sky. 

“TI am tired,” said Gault. ‘What is the 
news of the election?” 

Stackpole replied that he had carried 
one Hundred, or district, out of a possi- 
ble forty in the state. To this, Gault made 
no reply. 

ro Teta 


Demigods 


Stackpole went on, seeking apparently 
to divert Gault’s mind. He told of cer- 
tain changes of newspapers, how the Sun 
had been purchased by the Mundy inter- 
ests, what he, Stackpole, thought this 
change portended. ‘Times are changing 
rapidly,” he said. “When we began we 
never dreamed that we would build a 
newspaper around a comic strip and a 
telegram.” He told how a certain typeset- 
ter was leaving Gault’s employ, how such 
and such a one had been hired to take his 
place, the trivial gossip of the shops. He 
remarked upon the work of a rival col- 
umnist. ‘“He had a leader in the head of 
his column on Saturday,” Stackpole said. 
“Tt was headed, ‘Gault carries the state 
and drains the Ocean dry.’ Upon the sheet 
was a small figure of yourself. Over it 
was flung a torrent of exclamation marks 
as if your body was a flood of water.” 

To him, Gault gave no heed. 


Throughout that day he remained in 
the garden. A walk flagged with stone 


[e2r2e} 





John Gault Grown 


served his purposes well. Upon it he 
walked, brushing at the flower stalks with 
his hands. The walk circled the garden, 
crossing the high point of it. From this 
he could look into the valley, perceive the 
road that ran immediately beneath him. 
The day was mild. The hills stood out 
with cameo-clearness against the sky. 

The morning passed: noon came. Gault 
walked with a cane now. With it, he 
thrust at the stalks of the plants, slashed 
at the dead and rotting flowers. “I am a 
shadow that whirls a shadow,” he said. 
None approached him. None remem- 
bered him. The hours passed through the 
garden. 

Late that afternoon he perceived a 
road-mender at work beside the bridge, 
filling with fresh earth the gaps torn be- 
tween plank and road by the autumn 
rains. He was an old man, stooped and 
shaking, but he worked briskly, easily 
wheeling his heavy barrow from bank to 
road. 

With the approach of dusk fog ap- 

[ 213 ] 


Demigods 


peared, which thickened as the light be- 
gan to fail, rolling up in an ever-increas- 
ing pall from the Brandywine. The road- 
mender hastened his labor, endeavouring 
to finish his work before the light was 
gone. Gault perceived this, watched him 
with interest. 

The old man had dug a hole in the sur- 
face of the bank and this seemed like a 
wound, for the soil was very wet and the 
substance of the clay not unlike flesh. He 
had filled his barrow with earth and had 
wheeled it to the bridge. With a broad 
steel spade he had placed the clay upon 
the road and now was beating it into 
place with the flat of the shovel. 

The sound of the blows reverberating 
from the drum-like surface of the bridge 
resounded with peculiar hollowness in 
the mist above the treetops, was given 
back in small, flat echoes beyond the pall 
of fog. It was as though he beat upon a 
tomb that strangely answered him. 

The old man paused to rest and a 
period of silence ensued, during which 

[ 214 ] 





John Gault Grown 


the mist was creeping ever higher above 
the road, permitting details of tree and 
landscape to emerge with the flat rays of 
the sun in a curling, smoking haze. 

Upon the highest ridge of the road ap- 
peared a man. He moved at a slow and 
weary trot, lurching heavily through the 
mud. His head was down; his hands were 
clenched across his breast as if he held 
himself together. He bent forward weak- 
ly from the waist, reeling with each 
stride. Every mark of exhaustion was 
upon him, the deep convulsive breathing, 
the utter lassitude of body and of limb. 
Yet he did not run as if he sought escape, 
but rather as one who struggles endlessly 
through a dim monotony of torment. 

John Gault leaned from his garden as 
from the parapet of a dream, perceived 
in this figure the body and habiliments of 
Acie Carrol, ceased to breathe. 

A minute passed, during which the fig- 
ure advanced. 

Said Gault—“I must meet him with 

[215 | 


Demigods 


propriety.” With his cane in his hand, he 
descended the bank. 


To the two, the road-mender gave no 
heed. Both might have been the shadows 
of a dream. John Gault could note no 
change of time upon the body of Carrol. 
Upon his face, however, was a look of 
dullness and of pain, as if he had been 
condemned to wander endlessly through 
a world, monotonous, colorless, dim as 
Lettic; 

Below John Gault the figure stopped. 
Night was advancing fast. The visage of 
this ghost was obscure to Gault. 

Carrol seemed to speak. 

“Blown back from hell I sought you 
out. Put away that which you have 
gained. Cast it into the fire of your tor- 
ment. Put your body and your substance 
upon the earth. Let the people of the 
earth devour them. Only thus shall you 
find satiety.” 

The ghost of Carrol turned, fled. Night 
drew him into itself. 

2764 


John Gault Grown 


Panting, shouting, his vast body labor- 
ing, John Gault fled after him. Months 
passed and he did not return to Wilming- 
ton. But once did he return to the Valley 
of the Brandywine. 


Ter7] 





V. GAULT’S END 


Ice WAS nearly dawn when John Gault 
returned to the garden. All was as he had 
left it. None of his household were 
awake. . 

He went to his library and for a time 
busied himself among his papers. He 
found his will, destroyed it. It had con- 
tained a bequest for the purpose of found- 
ing a school of journalism—to be known 
by a name selected for it by John Gault, 
“The School of Mercury.” He attempted 
to make an audit of his accounts, failed 
because of their confusion. The figures 
ran into a welter before his eyes. It was 
light when he ceased to work. He had ac- 
complished nothing. “Some other busi- 
ness calls me,” said Gault. 

For Stackpole he left a note, written in 
pencil, scrawled across the face of a 
newspaper: “Do what you wish with 
me.” After this, Gault left the house. 
None of his household were aware of his 

[ 218 | 





Gault’s End 


going. His valet, coming to wake him at 
nine o'clock, found that his bed had not 
been slept in. Gault’s wardrobe, his sil- 
ver, the sums of money which he was ac- 
customed to keep in the house, were in- 
tact. He had taken nothing with him. 

His departure, however, was noticed 
by one who commented upon it. Gault’s 
neighbour, George Elder, returning from 
a ride at dawn, had seen Gault upon the 
road below the Sadler farm. 

“He was dressed as usual,” reported 
Elder. ‘‘He waved to me as I passed. I 
did not know that there was anything 
wrong with him fs 

Thus, John Gault walked out of the 
Valley of the Brandywine. 








The news of Gault’s going reached 
Wilmington about noon, for Elder, com- 
ing from the Court House to his club, 
confirmed rumours already current there. 

Gault’s corner of the club, where he 
was accustomed to sit and loll, his lunch- 

[ 219 | 





Demigods 


eon finished, was deserted. Past it went 
Elder, slow-moving, deliberate. 

At a table at the room’s end sat a group 
of men who knew Gault. They made 
room for Elder upon his approach. 

Elder told them of what he had seen. 
Instantly they surmised the truth. — 

“He has fled!” they cried. 

Each of the men then present made a 
remark concerning Gault. They spoke of 
him in the past tense, as if he had ceased 
to exist. 

“The cormorant has had enough,” said 
Mundy, whose newspapers Gault nearly 
had destroyed. 

“He was a human sea,” said Hardy, an 
attorney. 

“Fle was as fabulous as a unicorn,” 
said Emenesty, from whom Gault had 
purchased his country place. “He existed 
only for a little time, and now has ceased 
to exist.” 

Said Braunstein, who was rumoured to 
be a silent partner in some of Gault’s en- 

P2200 


Gault’s End 


terprises—“‘He was a coward and a pol- 
troon!” 

Elder spoke last. “He was a runagate 
and a rascal, but he moved destiny. He 
was a great figure in our world. 

“He tampered with the immutable 
spirit that was in him, made a jest of it, 
played with it, betrayed it. Now it may 
devour him.” 

By afternoon the city’s newspapers, 
save Gault’s own, were filled with the 
sound of his fall. Sympathy for him was 
lost in view of the appalling financial 
ruin which he had brought upon his 
friends as well as upon himself. Rumours 
beyond belief were current concerning 
him. It was stated that he had expended 
nearly thirty thousand dollars upon his 
campaign alone, that his country place 
and the labour that he had had performed 
there had cost him a quarter of a million 
dollars more. By night these amounts had 
grown. Further rumours were current. It 
was reported that Gault had taken a vast 
sum of money with him in his flight, that 

[p22 tel 


Demigods 


Ally Emetté had returned to him, and 
that he had fled to Paris with her. 

The morning’s “Sun” showed a carica- 
ture of Gault, dressed in the conventional 
costume of a stage Don Juan. This figure 
was shown stepping between America 
and Europe. at a stride. The sea was 
crossed in the swirl of a great black cloak. 
The figure wore buskins, curling above 
its knees, and these buskins were shown to 
be stuffed with money. Beneath this cari- 
cature was the legend—‘A Shadow 
Passes.” Another paper titled an editori- 
al—“‘An Unworthy King Has Been De- 
posed.” 

Thus, Gault passed, his rights and pre- 
rogatives slipping from him. None might 
say where the Gault of fiction ended and 
actuality began. 


Upon the seventh day of January, 1913, 

a petition in involuntary bankruptcy was 

filed against John Gault. When news of 

the filing of this petition was brought to 

Stackpole, he exclaimed—“This is the 
2220) 





Gault’s End 


end.” Forthwith he closed and locked 
Gault’s offices. Type then upon the 
presses was struck from them. That night 
no newspaper of Gault’s appeared upon 
the street. 

The schedules of his debts and assets 
were prepared by Stackpole. When these 
were filed, an adjudication having been 
made, the full extent of his profligacy be- 
came apparent. 

His newspapers, their good will, stock, 
equipment, housings, were mortgaged to 
their full value. To his employees and 
workmen he owed thirty thousand dol- 
lars. To banks within the state he owed a 
hundred thousand dollars. His country 
seat was mortgaged. His servants had not 
been paid for months. To tradespeople 
upon current accounts he owed ten thou- 
sand dollars. To his tailor alone, he owed 
a thousand dollars. To his bootmaker, 
more. 

His assets were shown to be diverse. 
His cattle were worth ten thousand dol- 
lars. His silver, jewelry, pictures, were 

[ 223 ] 


Demigods 


worth seventy thousand dollars. His 
newspapers and their equipment, his real 
estate and shares of stock, were worth a 
million and a half dollars. This great for- 
tune Gault had raised out of ink and 
earth within the short space of fifteen 
years. In the closets of his home lay 
irony. Gault was shown to have been pos- 
sessed of one hundred and ten suits of 
clothes. 

None the less, his debts were shown to 
exceed his assets by a total of some three 
hundred thousand dollars. 

Said Elder, who had been appointed 
his trustee: ‘Why did he flee? Gault 
could have raised this sum in a day.” 

This question was pertinent. Others 
asked it also. Gault could not be found to 
answer it. 


Thus John Gault, enormous, illogical, 
impossible, grotesque, human and inhu- 
man, beyond description, flagrant, in his 
madness, passed from the Wilmington 
stage, and, in the course of time, was 

[ 224 ] 


Gault’s End 


largely forgotten by the world in which 
he had played so great a part. The riddle 
propounded by Elder—which, perhaps, 
is the riddle of the life of Gault—stood 
for a time unanswered. John Gault had 
thrown himself back to the earth that was 
his strength—gone in search of that in- 
definable question and jest that com- 
posed his life—still subject to endless 
pain and endless hope. He was searched 
for, but not found. Elder could not find 
him, nor did his creditors find him. For a 
long time he was not heard of. But when 
news came of him, it was plain that he 
was not himself. He still swaggered, 
boasted, bullied, bluffed, and cheated, 
but the ineluctable magic of his life had 
run out from beneath his hands. 

‘Perhaps the skein of nerves within his 
brain dividing charlatan from prophet, 
from genius, from maker of a world, had 
been subject to a change beyond human 
knowledge: perhaps his genius, corroded, 
had driven him mad. Perhaps, he sought 
to recreate himself, spring anew into the 

[ 225 ] 


Demigods 


spirit and body of the old John Gault. If 
so, he failed. That acrid, ungiving little 
Sadler girl had finished him. It is true 
that he was still able meanly to force a 
farmer’s wife to forget her chosen duty, 
to seduce field hands, farmers, and yok- 
els, to a religion that held himself as its 
godhead, perhaps even to believe in this 
religion himself, but his power, his glory, 
were gone. He himself had forgotten 
them. 

Said Elder, a little shocked upon com- 
ing suddenly upon this portion of his life, 
“Fe should have rested, secure in his 
laurels of the damned.” 


By November of this year, word of 
Gault began to drift back to Wilming- 
ton. It was reported that he had turned 
himself into an itinerant preacher—a 
prophet who told of a new heaven and a 
new earth. With him was a woman said 
not to be Emetté. In time the rumor con- 
cerning her was crystallized. It became 
known that she was a farmer’s wife whom 

[(226"] 


Gault’s End 


Gault had seduced from her home near 
Lenape. Together the two were touring 
the countryside, without money or means 
of support, sleeping where shelter was af- 
forded them, begging their food. By day 
and by night Gault preached. 

None seemed aware of just what he 
said. Some said that his doctrines were 
blasphemous—that he taught the pleas- 
ures of hell. Others reported that his 
preachings were purer and nobler—that 
he told of a world without money or gain. 
Some said that already he called himself 
a god, that he had been driven from the 
village of Munden, threatened with phys- 
ical annihilation because of this. Later it 
appeared that near this same viilage he 
had so prevailed upon a tenant farmer 
that the latter shared his small house with 
him and was supplying him with food 
and money. Of the woman with Gault, 
little was said. 

Snatches of these rumours and of others 
came to Elder. The curtain of darkness 
that obscured John Gault lifted for a 

[ 227 | 





Demigods 


little, giving to the world momentary 
view of him. To this sight, Mundy con- 
tributed. Returning from Munden, he 
had come upon Gault. 

The time was night. The land was bit- 
terly cold. Mundy had come to a fire in a 
field beside.the road. Before this fire 
stood Gault. Around him were gathered 
his hearers, farmers, farm hands, yokels, 
their wives and children. They stamped 
their feet upon the earth to warm them, 
threshed their arms across their chests to 
keep out the cold. 

Gault alone stood without movement. 
His clothes were in shreds. His feet were 
bound in rags. With a sort of iron rigour 
he stood impervious to the bitter cold, to 
the waiting throng. 

Without warning he began to speak. 
“Tam your path,” he cried. “Put your 
feet upon me. I shall give you my body 
to be burned. Shall lead you down into 
hell. Then shall you know me!” 

Suddenly perceiving Mundy, he cried 
out in a voice of terror, as if in the de- 

D225 


Gault's End 


basement of his pride—‘I have covered 
my face with earth!” 
There followed silence. 


Said Mundy, relating his experience 
to Elder—“His appearance was dread- 
ful: his mien, mad: but what moved me 
the most were his clothes. They were 
shreds of a suit I had seen him wear. I 
noticed the buttons—enamelled steel, 
bright, shining, the sort which he had had 
made for him and of which he was so 
proud. He stood almost within the flame. 

Within a short time, Elder himself 
made an effort to see Gault. He went to 
Munden, sought out the farmer with 
whom Gault was reported to stay. Gault 
had gone. The farmer did not know 
where, made plain to Elder that he 
wished never to see Gault again. “TI could 
not keep him here,” said the man simply. 
“There was no peace in him.” John 
Gault, still searching, had not found his 
world. 

From down the state came a rumour of 

[ 229 ] 


Demigods 


Gault’s death. It was inquired into and 
found to be true. Some asked how he had 
died. In answer a clipping from a news- 
paper was produced—“‘At Buryhill, Ce- 
cil County, during a revival meeting last 
evening, three men, convinced by one of 
their number that they were Shadrach, 
Meshach, and Abednego, walked into a 
burning brick kiln. At a late hour last 
night they had not been heard from.” 

When those that knew Gault read this, 
they said—‘‘He has covered his face 
with ashes.” 


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